


Witch Hazel

by AmbitiousSkychild



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Ghost Town, Lance's POV, M/M, Shiro is so tired, So many emotions, Witches, also please don't hate me for shallura, and i am prepared to pass those lessons onto you dear reader, broganes, but he's treated so well, but not how you're thinking, i have learned so much witchcraft writing this, i started working on this back in season 2 when we all shipped them!, pidge goes by Katie in this fic, slowburn, the enemies thing is one-sided tho, this is the Halloween VIBE my guys, use of flashbacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-07-12 03:12:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15986411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmbitiousSkychild/pseuds/AmbitiousSkychild
Summary: Floodcrest is a mix of the supernatural and the usual.Ghosts along with cellphones, witches along with semi-reliable bus transportation, hauntings along with a never-ending influx of loud-ass tourists driving up inflation.The past right along with the present.Keith, who is a touchy topic, unattainable, not a fan of Lance's and therefore, suddenly back in Lance's life. Along with Lance who just wants his life to make some goddamn sense for once.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! So, I've been slowly working on this since season 2 so those are they dynamics this fic is built off of. I have put my heart and soul into this AU and is the MAIN thing i'm working on please be gentle
> 
> ALSO THANK YOU [KaiserinAsraia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaiserinAstraia/works) FOR STAYING UP ALL NIGHT WITH ME TO TALK THIS AU AND FOR BETA READING ALL OF IT I OWE THIS ENTIRE FIC TO YOU

By all accounts of those still left alive at the time, it was the witches.

When the water overtook the shore, the town had been asleep. By the time it set into the town, there was no escape.

The water seeped inches into each home before the town realized, had swelled to two feet by the time anyone reached their front doors. Horses were swept away, carriages destroyed, homes were flooded with their owners trapped inside, and those that made it out were swept along and drowned, caught blind in the heavy rain.

The water surged and moved, waves swelling and pulsing in like a heartbeat – like the flowing blood of something living and breathing. It swallowed everything and left only a small handful of survivors who managed to swim the surf onto higher ground, and unfortunately, the coven of witches who lived there.

The witches had been watching. They swooped down onto the survivors the moment they took their first steps, dragged them screaming and wailing up the hill into their nest where they were brutally slaughtered and sacrificed. Except for one who managed to escape, forced to suffer her trauma alone until she stumbled upon a safe town with people to take her in.

She traveled back years later with a husband, and a new group of settlers to take back the land and eradicate the evil that still lived there. When they made it back, the witches were prepared, attacking immediately and viciously, but ultimately finding themselves subdued, killed, or taken captive.

The settlers celebrated by hanging each witch left alive and reconquering the land, now to be called Floodcrest: A town that was never to be accosted by the evil of witches again but fell victim anyway in the form of a town-wide curse strong enough to last centuries, and the oppression of the flooded spirits still left unrested.

At least, that was how Lance always heard it.

And it was undoubtedly why it was so hard to find a goddamn reasonable place to live in this town. Every fucking corner had historical value that jacked the price right up into the stratosphere.

And it wasn’t that he didn’t believe in it. That was the thing, everyone believed in it – it was impossible not to when the ghosts of Floodcrest made up half the population – but as a beach town on the coast, Floodcrest attracted hordes and hordes of gullible-ass tourists so, it was in the town’s best interest to _hardcore_ believe in it.

Thereby screwing its own locals, i.e. Lance McClain, out of a reasonable rent some place in exchange for the look and the feel and the _vibe_ and the fanaticized extortion of an established ghost town.

Consequently, he was on his way now, newspaper ad in hand, to his last resort – the house on The Witches’ Hill. The current owner had taken out an ad in the paper about it, and it had gone three weeks unanswered. Until today, that is.

Not only was the rent the cheapest he was going to get in this town, it was almost the cheapest he had ever seen, but that made sense. You’d basically have to pay a local to live on The Witches’ Hill, but a newcomer would be _so much worse_ with all the touristy bullshit, that the owner would just rather take the loss.

Besides, Lance noted with growing interest in tandem with his mounting desperation, when he called the owner the day before, he’d said there were two of them, so the rent couldn’t be that bad with three. Not to mention, having roommates meant he wouldn’t be lonely. It’d feel like living with his siblings but so much more independent, so.

Yeah.

Last resort. He was staying positive. But a reasonable amount of positive because these people could always be murderers, and the house was most definitely going to be a little horrifying if it still looked the way he remembered.

Everyone had been on The Witches’ Hill at least once. Usually as a kid, or a teenager, as an initiation of some sort, but nothing ever usually happened to anyone. There were stories of _ghostly moanings_ , or inanimate objects moving on their own, but Floodcrest really was haunted, so… none of that was unusual.

In light of all that, upon his arrival, Lance supposed the only thing worthy of note would be that the place looked kind of run down, which was, again, to be expected. After all, it had been burned down in the sixties by paranoid Christians, then rebuilt in the eighties thanks to the incessant prodding of the historical society. However, it hadn’t really been kept-up with, since any other tenant who moved in wound up moving out before anything could even start to come up about any kind of domestic maintenance.

Maybe this faded yellow, Addams Family-looking, two-story, hilltop, tourist attraction was nicer on the inside.

Cautiously, he stepped onto the porch, the wood slats a little holey and creaky beneath his weight, but not overall alarming. He took a deep breath and let it out, bringing a strong fist up to pound on the front door, which was – okay _nice_ – that was real friggin’ wood, holy _shit_ , and his knuckles hurt by the end of it.

So…. At least no one was going to be able to break in the front door. Security checked off. Kind of? This positivity thing could work.

If someone ever came to the door. He’d told Shiro he was going to be here today around this time. He hoped the guy didn’t forget about him…. He rang the doorbell, a little less hopeful that that would work, waited around awkwardly another three minutes, noting that there wasn’t even a nice bench to sit or any kind of normal porch amenities, before deciding to give knocking one last try.

He raised his fist, the palm side this time, not his knuckles – they remembered how this went the last time – but then the door cracked open and a head popped out the opening. “ _What?!_ ”

“ _Keith_?” Lance squeaked.

The guy blinked back at him, slipping forward a bit so his shoulders hung out the door and Lance could properly assess like this, could properly assess the dark hair, once cut choppy and awkward years ago, now grown out almost long and oddly flattering, the end strands laying out against the back and sides of his neck.

And he could assess the now visible shoulders, once bony and small just like his own had been, but now filled out and still slim but lithely muscular. Same for the chest that was slightly visible.

He could assess the eyes, dark and brooding and sad and disappointed and _angry_ at the whole entire world once. Those hadn’t changed.

His glare hardened. “Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” Keith demanded in return, condescending and lethal all at once.

“It’s me,” Lance deadpanned, thought in his heart of hearts that this had to be some sick joke – stumbling upon _Keith_ of all people and then the asshole acting like he didn’t know him. “ _Lance_. From pre-k and kindergarten and elementary and middle school and high school before you dropped out.”

“I didn't drop out, asshole, I got my GED.”

“So you could move into the creepy Monster House on The Witches’ Hill?” Lance scoffed.

“Yeah, about my creepy Monster House, why are you here?” Keith snapped back, eyes locked wryly on the newspaper in his hand.

“I’m glad you asked,” Lance chirped, cocky and smug at the thought of how annoyed Keith was about to be. He smirked, took a moment to really _savor_ the cruel twist of power he held in his literal right hand. “I’m here to solve your roommate problem.”

Keith lifted his gaze from the paper to Lance, stared him in the eyes like he couldn’t be real, like this couldn’t be happening before the information caught up to him – Lance saw the wheels turning behind his eyes, saw the cogs meshing in his brain. He snatched the paper from Lance’s too slow hands. “No. _Fuck_. I fucking told him not to run this!”

“What’s the problem?” Lance quirked a brow.

“There’s not a problem, we don't need a roommate,” Keith rushed out, shoving the ad back into Lance’s hands. “This was a mistake, _fuck off_.”

_Slam._

Lance blinked, trying to sort out what the hell just _happened_ for a few seconds before he grasped it, and he growled, got halfway to knocking again when the door swung back open.

To reveal _holy hell_ the most beautiful man alive. “Hey,” The Most Beautiful Man Alive said sheepishly, and okay _this_ guy had the Shiro vibe. Lance honestly couldn't pick a feature to stick with: the dyed white bangs atop a sexy dark undercut, the mysteriously attractive scar across the bridge of his nose, or the muscles fucking _bursting_ out of his tank like baked bread around twine. “I realize now that I shouldn’t have left the door,” The Most Beautiful Man Alive said, calling Lance’s attention back to his eyes.

“Haaaghhhmm,” Lance tried unintelligibly.

The man laughed back, and Lance could tell he was just going along with this because he was a nicer person than Keith. Oh yeah. Keith. Now that he thought about it, in the background, he could hear that lunatic yelling. “You’re Lance?”

Lance nodded dumbly.

“Cool, come on in,” the man stepped aside in the doorway to allow Lance passage. “I’m Shiro.”

“Cool,” Lance managed.

Shiro shut the door behind them as Lance took a large sweeping glance around the grand fucking parlor type shit he’d stepped into that looked nothing like the horror house the outside looked like.

There were high ceilings and large tall windows on each side of the front door. The room was split down the middle, tasteful carpeting under Baroque style furniture separated by a hardwood floor aisle. His eyes got stuck on the _motherfucking chandelier_ , Jesus _Christ_.

And what came out was: “It looks like a really classy old lady lives here.”

Shiro laughed again. Nicer than Keith. “That’s what we said when we moved in.”

And across the room were bookshelf walls with stairs built sideways between them, and ascending to the right, classy as _hell_. They led into a hallway that opened out to the left and extended along the back wall – enclosed by a wall of more windows, and the banister, bleeding more sunlight into the room through its wooden spokes.

He could see the open door of one bedroom to the left end of the hall. He assumed any other rooms were just hidden from his view.

Speaking of which.

“Sorry about him,” Shiro said sheepishly over the sound of Keith’s forceful and obviously intentional commotion upstairs.

“Don't apologize for me!” Keith snapped back down.

“Alright, so we’re gonna have this talk in the kitchen,” Shiro decided then. “This way.”

Lance trailed after him to the right of the parlor and through a swinging wooden door where inside, was a more modern kitchen, most likely last updated around the time it was rebuilt, but still looking a decade older than it should.

“Do you like tea?” Shiro asked, gesturing for Lance to take a seat at the round plastic table near the fridge while he went to the cabinets.

“Sure, yeah,” Lance nodded, not watching Shiro’s arms at all.

“What kind?”

“Whatever’s fine.” He waited patiently as Shiro worked, tapped his fingers against the table top and observed green tile flooring, light wooden cabinets and an old, basic, white refrigerator displaying a picture of Keith. He was wearing a red beanie, it brought out the red in his flushed cheeks and the only way Lance knew he was smiling was that he knew what Keith’s smiles looked like – usually a little wince-y.

The picture directly beside Keith’s was one of Shiro, himself, with a girl in his arms, which made sad sense – of course a guy like Shiro wasn’t single. And the girl, _holy shit_ , where did they meet? Beautiful School? Blue eyes, earthy skin, and stark contrast silver hair – _goddess_. That was a _goddess_.

There was a picture under those two featuring two people who had to be siblings, had the exact same disconcertingly familiar face.

“If you move in here, you’ll meet her soon enough,” Shiro said suddenly, setting a mug of tea before Lance on the table. “She’s Keith’s best friend. Every few weeks she damn near moves in for a few days,” he continued fondly.

“Oh,” Lance said, turning back around in his seat. “Cool. And that’s her twin in the picture next to her?”

“No not twins,” Shiro sighed, voice turning reluctant. “That’s her brother, Matt. They’re seven years apart. You should see their dad, though. They all kind of just have that face.”

“He your best friend?” Lance asked conversationally.

“He was,” Shiro sighed, looking up when Lance hissed, didn’t give him the chance to wonder what happened and how to ask. “Don’t worry about it, we have a lot of other stuff to talk about, anyway.”

 _So_ much nicer than Keith. “Okay,” Lance agreed. “So, uh, what’s up with him?” he asked, sounding much more casual about it than he felt, because what he felt was a soul-crushing numbness kind of affair about it, and. He hadn’t seen the guy in almost six years and in all those years, all he’d done was worry about him. What could he have possibly done in their past that warranted _this_ kind of treatment?

Shiro sighed, not surprised at all, was probably waiting for Lance to ask. “He’ll get over it. In his defense, I really didn’t warn him about this.”

Lance sighed, told himself again to shove it down. There were more important things to concern himself with at the moment. “Yeah, okay. I mean, is he always like this?”

“I mean, to _me_ he is,” Shiro said with a fond kind of eyeroll. “But he’s my baby brother so I think he’s annoying as hell most the time.”

“Oh, _you’re_ his brother,” Lance echoed, remembering something about Keith having had a brother off in military school some time ago.

The kitchen door swung open then, smacked the back of Shiro’s chair, revealing Keith who looked a little less angry. He glanced sheepishly between the back of Shiro’s head and the kitchen door before stepping awkwardly through. “Sorry,” he murmured.

“It’s okay,” Shiro shrugged, though it was fond as Keith took a seat between them. “Glad you decided you should be involved in deciding who our new roommate is going to be.”

“Shut up,” Keith mumbled, sounding only half angry. Shiro only looked fonder and somehow Lance found it sweet. “Have you discussed rent?” he asked, turning his eyes onto Lance. “It’s two thousand dollars.” Okay, less sweet.

“It’s not two thousand dollars,” Shiro corrected, voice strong and already tired.

“And Shiro sings really loudly, like, all night,” Keith continued, glaring at Lance under dark hair. “And I throw knives as a hobby. Sometimes his girlfriend comes over and we do drugs.”

“Again, not true,” Shiro groaned, the fond expression completely gone and replaced with something more authoritative, parent-like, as he levelled his own glare at Keith. “Can you knock it off and be an adult for two minutes?”

“I am,” Keith retorted. “You’re the one asking the wrong questions.” He turned his glare harder onto Lance. “Why would _you_ want to move into this house anyway? No offense,” he said, with the look of someone who was about to be very offensive, “but you look… _tame_ ,” Keith settled on. “You’ll be gone in two weeks. Why should we take the risk?”

“Okay, but I’m still offended,” Lance grumbled back.

“Keith has got a point,” Shiro admitted begrudgingly. “You know where you are, right? Just tell me you’re not a new in town and that you know where you are.”

“As Keith well knows, I’ve lived here my whole life,” he said as Keith turned a heated glare on him. “I’m definitely not new here.”

Shiro blinked, turned confused eyes on Keith. “You know each other?”

“No,” Keith answered with a shrug like it was nothing, like Lance wasn’t even there. “Not really.”

Lance told himself to shove it down again, watched as Shiro gave Keith a searching _look_ , which he ignored, arms crossed, turned out to the side away from them, but Lance could tell that Keith felt it. “Well, then what’s with your attitude?” He pressed.

Keith shrugged. “I told you, I don't want anyone here,” he said, avoiding the question.

“That’s not what I asked,” Shiro levelled, he turned to Lance, sighing out in pure exhaustion, “What did Keith do?”

“Why would you assume it was _me_?” Keith glared.

“Because _you’re_ the one being so aggressive,” Shiro answered, tone level going for a kind of reasonable Lance had to agree with because, yeah, Lance was still fairly certain he hadn’t done anything.

“Unbelievable,” Keith muttered.

“Dude, I haven’t seen you since _high school_ , what the hell could you be so mad at me about?” Lance snapped without meaning to, and he hoped he hadn’t just ruined his chances for the cheapest rent he’d seen in town yet, when Keith shot him a glare that he could only describe as unholy.

“Are you fucking serious?” he demanded, trapping Lance in the gravity of his eyes, which had always had a pull on him before, but never quite like now when he felt like he was being sucked into a torture vortex.

“Um, yeah?” Lance said, probably a bit snarky, but Keith was being such an asshole, he couldn’t help it. “Like, I know we were best fucking friends or whatever back then, but I don’t think I ever did anything to you to deserve this. Just tell me what’s wrong so I can apologize, and we can move on, dude, ‘cause I just need a place to _live_ , not a bunch of drama.”

Which was apparently the absolute wrong thing to say, because it sent Keith into a look of absolute disbelief before his glare somehow turned even worse. Lance could see him tensing in his seat, like he was holding himself back.

Shiro glanced between the two of them, stared long at Keith who glared right back, angry mouth fixed into a scowl. “I’m not gonna talk about it,” he told him. “You can’t make me.”

“Keith,” Shiro started.

“Do whatever you want,” he said, eyes down into his lap, sounding angry and tired and resigned all at once. “You said we need a roommate, so whatever. I’ll be fine, I always am.”

Looking perplexed, Shiro slid his attention back over onto Lance, who tried to look as innocent as possible, tried to convey with his expression that he honestly had no clue on God’s green earth what the hell this was about, that Keith was crazy, and that Lance would never hurt a fly and so was a worthy tenant.

“Look,” Shiro sighed after a long minute of very visual contemplation. “If you’re not going to communicate, then I can’t fix it right now, but we do have to fix our rent situation. We’ll talk later,” he told Keith who continued to glare down at the tabletop. “So, back to the house,” he said, looking up to Lance with tired eyes. “It’s just that you seem nice, so I’m gonna stress again that any other place you’ve ever lived in this town, this place is worse. There’s a lot of history about this place.”

“There’s history about every place, try house-hunting in this town,” Lance shrugged. “We’ve all experienced a little haunting here and there. It doesn't bother me.”

Keith scoffed.

“I swear, I know what I’m getting into,” Lance pressed, eyes level with Shiro’s when he still seemed skeptical. He tried not to look over at Keith because underneath it all, he was _hurt_ , really, even if he couldn’t say anything on it at the moment. “I’ll even stay out of Keith’s way if that’s what he wants.”

“Well, first off, you wouldn’t have to stay out of Keith’s way if you moved in here, Lance. Because Keith isn’t five and that’s a terrible way to live with people.”

Lance didn’t know what to say to that, felt it would be too much to say anything at all, especially when Keith didn’t, but he could tell any further discussion on this hiccup would be between Keith and his brother when he left.

Shiro cast one last look between the two of them before visibly deciding not to address it for the moment. “So, if you’re really, really sure about living here, then… I’m not going to lie – the ghosts here can get pretty terrifying.”

Lance blinked. “Then why live here at all?”

Keith and Shiro shared a look, then Keith was back to glaring down at his crossed arms as Shiro began to look forcibly casual. “I mean, we’ve kind of been used to the nightly ghostly horror here and there for a really long time, so it’s just. Easier.”

Which was just about the weirdest thing Lance had ever heard, and there was clearly more to that story, but Lance had no idea what to say to that, so he did what he did best. “Huh. Nightly ghostly horror is about how I would describe having to live with my _abuelita_.”

Shiro sighed, looking somehow relieved, this time in tandem with Keith who of course looked annoyed, which sent Lance scrambling.

“Not that I don’t _love_ my _abuelita_ ,” Lance corrected, becoming entirely certain way too late that that was the absolutely wrong thing to correct, but look at his mouth go. “She’s just strict and agile and terrifying in the way that seeing something very old and sweet suddenly move at top speed across the room to–”

“Is there a switch or something that makes you take things seriously?” Keith mumbled still refusing to meet Lance’s eyes.

“Look, man, I _do_ take this seriously. I’ll have you know I’ve never had a problem with ghosts in my life,” Lance snapped back, holding his ground as Keith sighed like he knew somehow that that was a lie, even though it _wasn’t_. Not really. Only a half lie, since he hadn’t even been able to interact with them for half his life and when he finally could, he hadn’t ever had a problem with _ghosts_ , plural, just one, technically, and only _one time_ , so Keith could mind his damn business.

Shiro was watching Keith who still wouldn’t lift his eyes from the table like he might change his mind, and maybe Lance was acting a little selfish, but this was his only option, here.

“Look, you’re reasonable,” Lance blurted out quickly, turning pleading eyes onto Shiro. “Can’t you just… give me a trial run or something? I’ll be the best roommate you’ve ever had,” he said, remembering what his father had told him all his life about excessive amounts of confidence and how there was no such thing. “And if I’m not, then. It’s up to you. Is that fair?”

Expression gone even more contemplative, Shiro cleared his throat as Lance inwardly panicked. “A trial run,” Shiro echoed finally. “I guess that could work.”

“Oh, fuck, really?” Lance sighed out in relief. “Great! I promise you won’t regret it – I might even be able to help with the whole ‘nightly ghostly horror’ thing; I’m _really_ good with the ghosts in this town,” he nodded.

“Oh,” Shiro said, smiling a bit, and Lance had the thought that maybe he didn’t believe him, but he’d change that. “That’s good to know. Besides, I’m sure the trial run isn’t really necessary, I just want to be absolutely sure you can handle it here before we all commit to this,” he admitted like a good, decent dude.

Lance nodded, excited and grateful and vowing to himself to have Hunk bake Shiro a pie. “Awesome,” Lance said.

“Pretty sure you’ll be singing a different song by the end of the week, but I like the positivity. You seem pretty confident with this stuff, so I’ll trust you,” Shiro said with a smile, a show of confidence in him. Or maybe blind, desperate hope, Lance wasn’t picky.

Keith didn’t say another word.

*

For all that every local in Floodcrest basically came out of the womb knowing about The Witches’ Flood, Lance had been the last in his group of friends to even _see_ a ghost.

All his siblings – everyone else in his family – in the whole _town_ had been able to see them their whole lives, but for some reason, Lance _couldn’t_. And even though he knew he was different from them, he still tried. Something was keeping him unable to see anything more than inanimate objects shifting on their own or feeling cold spots. Something was keeping him stuck hearing the groans, but never knowing where they came from. It was something he barely understood – couldn’t truly grasp at his young age, but he understood that something had been done to make him like this, so, maybe it could be undone, somehow.

His parents told him not to worry about that. They told him he was just lucky to be alive. But he was tired of hearing that. He didn’t want to be “lucky.” He wanted what his family had. He wanted to make friends with the spirits around town. He wanted to be able to see his family on _Dia de los Muertos_. He didn’t want to simply exist in this town, he wanted to live in it just like everyone else could. Maybe his parents gave him sound reasoning, but Lance was a _kid_. A kid who had never once waited, never once took a moment to _breathe_ , never once hesitated to reach far beyond his limits for what he wanted. This was no exception.

“But,” Hunk started, tugging his backpack straps higher up his shoulders. “Are you sure you want to see your first ghost _there_?” Hunk was thirteen, thoughtful and too smart for his own good. As Lance’s best friend in the whole wide world, he shared a lot of the same experiences Lance did, for instance, also never having seen a ghost before.

But Lance was twelve and _desperate_. All the other kids he knew had made friends with the ones living in their _houses_. It was all anyone talked about at lunch anymore, and Lance was tired of treading water, tired of staying quiet so no one knew he wasn’t like them. He wanted his own ghost story.

Halloween fell on a weekend that year, and instead of going to the festival like usual, all the kids from the seventh grade were going to camp out on The Witches’ Hill. There was no way there wouldn’t be a ghost there. Nothing was going to stop Lance from going.

Not even Hunk’s sound reasoning. “These aren’t going to be like the other ghosts. It’s the Witches’ Hill. It’s where the witches flooded the town! It’s where those horrible, gross, bloody murders happened in the sixties, and don’t forget about all the occult _sacrifices_ –”

“Yeah, Hunk, I know, everyone knows,” Lance interrupted, though gently flashing his friend a knowing grin. “But we’ll be fine. The point is, that place is mega haunted. There’s no _way_ we won’t see a ghost,” he explained, hiking his own backpack up onto his shoulders. “Besides, what would you rather do tonight? Go to the lame Floodcrest Festival like we do every year, or see our first ghost on The Witches’ Hill with all our friends?”

Hunk sighed, conceding, though Lance had never once been worried. “You covered all your bases, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a pro at this,” Lance shrugged, climbing out his window and waiting for Hunk to drop down beside him. “My parents think I’m staying at your place. I’ll call them in a few minutes and tell them we made it back to your house safe.”

And immediately after, Hunk would call his own parents telling them the same story, but in reverse, a trick they usually used to sneak into rated R movies or to go late-night surfing, but never this.

They neared the hill, lit only by the pale moon as they left the street lights down in the town below. Some of the other kids were already there at the top of the hill, grouped together on the ground beside the house. Shay waved them over when she noticed their arrival. After running up the hill, they squeezed into the circle to see Plaxum and Florona huddled close under a blanket, Swirn and Slav looking a little apprehensive, Keith and what had to be a brown-haired _kid_ – way too young to be here, and Rolo and Nyma, from the eighth grade, setting up a Ouija board.

“Oh, jumping right in, huh?” Lance chuckled nervously.

“Well yeah,” Nyma laughed back. “What’d you think we came up here on Halloween night to see another lame, sad ghost? This is the perfect night to summon a seriously scary one.”

“This isn’t even a good séance,” Keith murmured from across the circle. “We probably need more people.” And God, Lance hated when he was right, but he had thought, just as well, that this wasn’t the turnout he’d expected.

“Well, what are we supposed to do?” Rolo snapped. “Everyone else is too scared to be here, that’s not our fault.”

“Besides,” Nyma sneered, tossing him a challenging glare. “Since when were you an expert on séances? What do you know?”

It was a good question, Lance thought. Lance had known Keith for years and years – since his very first day of school when he was four, he’d known Keith Kogane. The quiet, dark-haired boy in his class who did everything well without even trying. The lonely one sitting across the table at lunch who was so angry – too intimidating to approach. The kid with the sad eyes and bony shoulders, slouched with the weight of the whole world. The hard-weathered boy from his hometown that made his stomach _flip_. Lance would love to know what he knew.

“I know my family’s being haunted,” Keith growled out, with all the fight in the world in that one sentence. “And no one in the real world knows anything, so I’m here to talk to someone who does. So, I know that you guys should take this more seriously if this is going to work.”

“Show me one family that _isn’t_ being haunted,” Rolo rolled his eyes, but he wasn’t watching Keith, didn’t see the defeat and the sadness and the desperation in his eyes. Lance didn’t think anyone did, aside from the child sitting next to him. “Welcome to fucking Floodcrest,” Rolo scoffed.

Dismissive, like everyone always was with Keith. All the time, no matter what he said. The more impressive and weird he was, the more he wanted approval, the more the other kids made him work for it, made things harder for him, pushed him _out_.

And Lance was no better than they were. He watched.

He watched Keith get angrier, more distracted, more stressed out, more hacked off every day, and he watched as no one else cared.

Rolo and Nyma fiddle with the Ouija board to no avail. Lance knew he should have felt disappointed when nothing happened, but instead he felt… oddly relieved. Maybe Hunk was right. Maybe he didn’t want to see his first ghost like this, not that he’d tell him.

Rolo and Nyma kept messing with it, even as it got later and later. Even as the rest of the group had moved on to other courses of entertainment.

 

Lance flinched, jolting awake. He glanced frantically around, drawing a loss for when he’d fallen asleep, but there he was – still in the circle, surrounded by his also sleeping friends. Fuck, they were all going to be in so much _trouble_ , he thought as he shivered, and it wracked his entire body. He’d never shivered like that before – had never been this _cold_. Maybe that was why he’d woken up. He couldn’t even feel Hunk’s warmth beside him.

He rubbed at his eyes, hard and insistent until they quit aching, until he was sure the world would stop being so blurry, then tried again to observe his surroundings. Hunk was sharing his warmth with Shay rather than him even though they were sitting right next to each other. And there was this weird blue light, coming from his left, casting an eerie glow onto his friends, shining too brightly, from the center of the circle, and Lance turned reluctantly to tell someone to turn off their phone, then froze.

_That’s–_

No, it _wasn’t_. He blinked, rubbed at his eyes again. He didn’t have his glasses and his contacts were dry in his eyes and it had to be a blur in – in his _lenses_ , that couldn’t really be a–

He shook his head, pushed himself up off the cold grass, wandered closer. “Hello?” he whispered.

The ghost turned, and it was just like all his siblings said. He felt cold right through his heart, like his own blood had stopped flowing. The ghost’s feet really didn’t touch the ground and it glowed an ethereal, blue, ghoulish glow. He could see right through him. He saw the eyes, but he didn’t see any pupils in them.

“ _You can see me_ ,” the ghost breathed back, scratchy and thin like the breeze, but razor sharp like danger.

“You’re a ghost,” Lance said dumbly, idiotically, and he wished – God, he wished he had seen his first ghost when he was younger, when he wasn’t so _awkward_. “Are you a – is this _real_?”

“ _You’re scarred,_ ” The ghost rasped instead in a voice that made Lance so much _colder_ each time he spoke. It was a man, kind of old, with long, wispy, white hair floating about his head. He had an air about him, however, that made Lance feel like he had been very dangerous when he was alive.

He wanted to wake up Hunk, but he didn’t think he could move. “What does that _mean_? What are you d-doing here?” Lance managed, shivering as he asked. He had the irrational thought that he could freeze to death here tonight and his family would never know. “Who were you? When you were alive?”

“ _I came here_ ,” the ghost breathed, a strange smile sliding across his face. “ _Because I was called_.”

“I didn’t – I didn’t call you,” Lance stuttered, more and more afraid. “My friends did. They did it hours ago,” he explained, like that should mean anything.

“ _Yes_ ,” the man agreed, more knowing still, more taunting still. “ _I heard them call. I did not wish to come for them._ ”

“Then why are you here _now_?” Lance asked, defensive and afraid. “What do you want? Who are you? How come I never saw any of you before now?” Lance demanded. “Why now?”

“ _With a soul that torn, you were diverged from interacting from our realm_ ,” the ghost answered, like a cryptic old pastor, like adults who thought they knew better than you – people who played games. “ _But now that I have reached you_ ,” he continued, smile turning lecherous. _“We all can.”_

 _Torn soul_ , Lance’s brain echoed, mouth too frozen to try to demand to know what that _meant_. His voice was trembling and now the ghosts knew him. He had been lucky to be alive, but that wasn’t good enough and now – _and now_ – he shook his head, grit his teeth, tried to think something other than _run_. “You won’t hurt me,” Lance said, eyes squeezed shut tight, like maybe he’d wake up and this would never have happened. “A ghost has never hurt a human in Floodcrest.”

 _“I’d ask the one with the haunted family about that, if I were you.”_ Then the ghost cast a strange look over his shoulder at Keith, curled protectively around the little kid he’d brought.

“ _What_?” Lance squeaked, voice panicked and pitched out of his control.

The ghost vanished without an answer, leaving Lance awed – _angry_. The ghost had still never even told him who he was, and Lance couldn’t help but feel like the whole thing had been a game he never even signed up to play, and underneath it all, he was _terrified_. He wasn’t the one who messed with the Ouija board. He hadn’t _asked_ for that. He just–

He sank back down onto the ground, cold and shivering, too stunned to move.

He couldn’t move to go home. He couldn’t fall back to sleep, not like this. He sat, half scared the ghost would come back, half scared another would come in its place and he wished… He wished he knew how to talk to Keith because clearly Keith knew something he _didn’t_ and now – now the ghosts _knew_ him and what the hell did that _mean_? What did they want? What if they _killed_ him? _What if–?_

The rest of the night he shivered and cried, too petrified to move, too horrified to make a sound.

When the morning came, Lance was so tired he couldn’t blink. He’d sat shivering in the dark and the cold for hours, thinking in a mantra that Hunk and his parents and everyone else in the entire world had been right. He should have just been thankful that he’d survived – should have learned to live with what made him different, instead of looking for trouble on The Witches’ Hill like an idiot. Like someone with a fucking death wish. He’d been such a kid about all of this.

He watched as his friends slowly woke to the world, watched them immediately panic and check their phones, just as dead as his own. He watched them lament their ill-thought-out decision, listened as they swore and panicked about what their parents must be thinking.

“Lance!” Hunk yelled, realizing what had happened, how _dead_ they were. “Lance, we forgot to call our parents and my phone is dead, we have to _go_. _Now_.”

“Yeah,” Lance shook his head trying and failing to come back to the real world. “Yeah, okay, I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m–”

Keith was only just waking up, prodding at his friend who was still curled up, asleep. He didn’t seem nearly as panicked as the rest of them. He started trying to lift her up when she didn’t stir, and something about it made Lance feel so sad and lonely, and _hopeless_ , and–

“What did you mean about–?” Lance heard himself talking, felt himself walking to him like his body wasn’t his anymore. Keith snapped his head up, eyes just as guarded as always. Lance pressed on. “What did you mean about your family being haunted?” he rushed out, while he had Keith’s attention, while he had his eyes on him, while he felt this _pull_ to help him, while no one else was looking.

“Why would I tell _you_? I barely even _know_ you,” Keith lashed out, but Lance could tell – he had siblings, he could _tell_ – that this came from hurt. That it came from pain. That he wasn’t really mad at Lance, he was just _mad_. “Why would I give you ammunition to think I’m a joke, too?”

Lance watched, saw as something broke in his eyes, in his posture, heard it break in his voice and his eyes shut before Lance could see anymore.

He blinked, turned away and scooped up his friend, small enough to be lifted onto his back. “Come on, Katie,” he mumbled. He carried her slowly down the hill careful, so as not to jostle her as she leaned her head over his shoulder.

Lance watched until he couldn’t see him anymore.

Later on, over a sneaked phone call in the middle of the night, Hunk would ask what had Lance so freaked out earlier. Lance would tell him he’d seen his first ghost. Lance would tell him that it had been terrifying and that he’d been right. He would tell him he didn’t ever want to go to The Witches’ Hill – at least on Halloween – ever again.

He wouldn’t tell him anything that involved Keith.

He would tell Hunk that he was sorry he got to see his first ghost when Hunk didn’t, that he was sorry he was too afraid to wake him up, so they could cross this off their list together.

And Hunk would finally tell him that he’d been able to see them the whole time. He just hadn’t wanted Lance to feel alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Listen, if there’s a ghost in here, can you not?” Lance mumbled into his pillow, blankets up entirely over his head as he tried not to think about freezing to death in here somehow. “I have class in the morning, then I have to go straight to work, so I need my sleep and you’re being a dick. ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I genuinely wanted to call this chapter "Three's Company: Ghost Edition" but i didn't because i'm not quite THAT chaotic, but just know i was pondering it

Lance officially trial-moved in the next day after he got out of class, having packed as much junk as he could fit into his sister’s car. Keith blinked when he opened the door to see Lance there, like he thought he might have changed his mind about moving in overnight.

Shiro showed him to his room.

It was the first to the right upstairs, and it was amazing. Shiro had showed it to him the day before, and it was nice then, but now it was _his_ and that made it so much _better_.

He only had his laptop, his clothes, and his surf board, which he didn’t want to deal with until he absolutely had to, so he stowed them in his walk-in closet and flopped down onto his full queen-sized bed. There was no ceiling fan, he noticed. He would have to buy a fan the next time he went to the store. The tall ceilings, hardwood floors and wallpapered walls had him feeling like he’d just entered another plane of existence where someone had thought it would be nice to choose dark green with darker green accents as a wall color. It was loud, and dramatic, and gave off the feeling that the only acceptable things to do in this room were reading books and drinking warm tea, but Lance loved it immediately. It matched the rest of the house in that it was classic and elegant inside of an otherwise horrendous outer shell.

There was a desk across the room, mahogany brown with shelves atop the surface for him to do whatever he wanted with. Beside his desk was his window, tall, nearly up to the ceiling and decorated with drapes, muted maroon and pulled back into its holds on the wall.

Outside his bedroom door lay a long, flower-patterned rug that spanned the entire hallway directly to Shiro’s room. To the left of Shiro’s room was the upstairs bathroom, to the right of it was Keith’s, and to the right of that _,_ was a smaller, encased staircase that led to the attic. He’d seen it all briefly yesterday, when Shiro had given him the short tour.

He spent the rest of the day exploring it all for himself, trying to familiarize himself with his new surroundings, and more importantly, the inhabiting ghosts of his new home, which–

Yeah, which, strangely enough, he never happened to come across.

The very first place he’d gone was the attic, full of such creepy, surely ghost-attracting gems as an old rocking chair and old dismembered dolls, but – nothing. There was an actual record player gathering dust next to a fogged-up window, as well as peeling floral wallpaper and weirdly stained carpet, and not a single ghost.

Never willing to give up easily, he spent the better part of an hour rummaging through all the old boxes stacked about the room, only to discover that unfortunately, there were no embarrassing kid pictures of a young glaring Keith, or a hot, twink Shiro. In fact, there was nothing at all that seemed to belong to either of them, which left Lance wondering just who, then, all this stuff _did_ belong to.

Perhaps that thought was even more unsettling than the present lack of ghost activity.

Venturing down the attic stairs down, to the open upstairs hallway at a walk, and most definitely not a run, he found Keith, sprawled across the couch, a book in his hands, and dirty boots atop the armrest, foot twitching like he’d come across something interesting–

“Could you be any louder?”

Or maybe he was just irritated, Lance realized with an eyeroll. Keith hadn’t even looked up from his book, calmly turned the page, and for all that Lance could see, had already entirely forgotten about him. He was half tempted to stomp the rest of the way down the steps but didn’t want to risk Shiro coming out from his room and deciding this living arrangement wouldn’t work out, after all.

The more reasonable side of himself told him that eventually Keith would get over whatever _this_ was, and they could be adults. But the overwhelming impulsive side of him told him to be petty right back, and the thing about impulsivity was that it usually won out over sound reason, so he stomped the rest of the way down the stairs, glaring at the back of Keith’s head the whole time.

Sighing, he crossed through the living room, making a mental note to come back and observe the book titles along the shelves later on when Keith wasn’t so heatedly wishing death upon him that he could feel it through the atmosphere.

On the left side of the house, beyond the crafted wooden archway of the living room, was a den consisting of only a rug, a low table, a mirror, a small window out the front, and a closet which was, upon further investigation, filled with board games and DVDs. Which was funny, since Lance hadn’t come across a single television, and that was going to be the first thing to change.

There was another room around the corner, smaller than the others, only holding a bed and a side table, but unfortunately nothing else of interest to trigger Lance’s nosy side.

Back through the living room – where Keith hadn’t moved a muscle but the finger he used to turn the pages of his book – through the kitchen on the right side of the house was a laundry room Lance had missed yesterday.

Small, and unassuming, Lance basically had to fold himself to get fully inside of it. The washer was going so loud and fast that the entire machine shook rapidly, and Lance could barely hear himself think – just like the one back home, he realized with a lopsided grin.

There was a backdoor, further into the room – more of a side door – that led out onto the bare grass of the hill, looking even more depressing without the city view beyond it from this side of the house. He could see the woods from this side, though – seeming just as ominous and horrifically somehow alive as they’d always seemed.

Keith continued to keep to himself on the couch with his book as Lance further explored the house, found places to be alone, places to watch the town or the sky when it rained, when he wanted to feel lonely – wanted to feel like he knew how to handle himself when there wasn’t anyone else.

The sun was setting when Shiro came out of his room, suggesting they order pizza, to which Lance excitedly nodded and Keith grunted his approval, back to silently reading as Shiro and Lance collaborated right beside him on what to order – didn’t even look up half an hour later when their pizza arrived.

“So,” Lance started, cheese too hot and sliding off his entire slice, landing against his chin in a hot lava disaster. Keith, having been forced to put aside his book for twenty damn minutes, watched on with an intentionally blank face, probably didn’t want Lance to see him laugh even if it was at his expense. Shiro didn’t hold back snickering, however, as Lance did what he could to get the molten cheese off his skin as quickly as possible and onto his already scalded tongue. “I was told there was supposed to be some nightly ghostly horror going on,” he continued, shooting a smirk between his new roommates. “Maybe I’m dumb, but now that the sun’s set, is that going to start soon? If not, do I get a refund, or…?”

To which, Shiro scoffed in disbelief, expression amused as Keith very obviously rolled his eyes and they both ignored it. “So, what, you’ve been counting down the minutes to see one here?”

“Maybe,” Lance admitted reluctantly. “Thought this was gonna be a horror show. I’m trying to prepare myself for the pants-wetting _worst_ , but all I got is like, the _bunny slopes_ of horror. Not complaining at all, by the way, just… pointing out that _maybe_ this place isn’t quite as scary as it’s got a rep to be?” He wondered, even further, if it was possible that they had simply been trying to scare him, but he didn’t want to voice that just yet. He couldn’t imagine a single reason that made sense behind that theory to back him up, anyway.

“Or maybe you’re just not as great with ghosts as you thought,” Keith glared.

Lance glared straight back. “Or _maybe_ –”

“Can you two just… eat your pizza and stop acting like you hate each other?” Shiro sighed out, sounding exhausted. “Stop antagonizing him, Keith, this has all been _so_ exhausting.”

Lance wanted to say he didn’t hate Keith, but the look on Keith’s face, which suggested quite clearly that they were not in agreement there kept him quiet. “So, am I getting the shit scared out of me tonight, or what?”

“What went wrong in your life that you want that?” Keith murmured, around his pizza slice, like Shiro had never spoken.

“Just don’t worry about it so much,” Shiro said, rather than trying to calm them down again. “Keith and my girlfriend learned a lot of really useful sigils and guarded the entire house with them, so we haven’t actually been attacked in a really long time. They’re… pretty quiet in the day,” Shiro mused. “At night, that’s more their time. I promise you’re safe, they’re just… evil cursed spirits haunting the house we live in, and constantly reliving their final moments. Sometimes, you pick up that interference. It affects everyone differently,” he shrugged. “You’re a pretty positive person, you’ll probably be fine.”

“Rent’s good, though,” Keith drawled – the closest thing to a joke Lance had ever heard from him, and though he wanted to get caught up on that for a moment, there was something else that pulled at Lance’s attention.

“ _Sigils_?” he breathed out. “Wait, that’s hardcore as hell, first of all. I guess I’d never considered that shit was _real_ , it just always seemed like touristy junk to me. Did you have to draw them in blood or something?”

“Lance, no,” Shiro said gently, smile amused. “ _That’s_ the touristy junk – that’s not at all how this stuff really works.”

“But,” Lance hesitated, knowing he should just drop and leave it alone – especially after the response he’d gotten last time, but he often found he was far more curious than he was nonconfrontational. “Just… seems like a lot of effort to be able to stay in this place. I mean, _I’d_ have to have a pretty good reason, myself, to work that hard to prevent the spirits in my house trying to murder me instead of just moving somewhere else.” He threw in a shrug, hoping it would lessen the candidness of his statement, but he wasn’t backing down until he got an answer that made some type of sense.

Sharing a meaningful look with Keith, Shiro seemed to be coming up with something appropriate to say. Finally, he sighed, eyes on the pizza box between them. “Long story short – we’ve got a lot of history with these ghosts,” he said vaguely. “It made more sense to stay close.”

On the couch, Keith didn’t say a word, chewing thoughtfully on his pizza slice and keeping his gaze on the ground.

And Lance so badly wanted to ask what the hell had _happened_ , but there was the unmistakable feeling that it would just be hurtful to ask it. The answer was most likely something terrible, and he was already on thin ice with Keith as it was. He couldn’t make it worse by bringing up obvious past traumas and expecting him to talk about it with someone he knew by name only. He, himself, hated having to talk about his own personal drama – his damaged soul and how it got that way. “Okay,” Lance said finally, deciding it was only his business to a certain extent. He supposed he didn’t really need to know details. “But I gotta say,” he started, in a last-ditch effort to prove his character. “I think it’s really cool that you learned to make real sigils, Keith. It must have been tough to learn.”

“Huh?” Keith murmured. He glanced up from the ground, expression blank, but eyes alight in surprise. He cleared his throat, dropped his gaze determinedly back onto the ground. “Not really. Allura’s really good at that stuff and she taught me. Really, it was her.”

“Oh,” Lance said quietly. He took another bite of too-hot pizza, wondering if he could do anything right, or if Keith was going to drastically shut down every time he opened his mouth–

“Thanks,” Keith said, tone sounding like a question in its obvious uncertainty. He met Lance’s gaze with a quick glance. It was skeptical and careful – almost confrontational, which Lance realized were the perfect words to describe Keith.

For two days now, he’d tried to think back on what he could have possibly done in the past to leave Keith this upset with him but kept coming up empty. And he was having trouble letting it go – finding it difficult to just let it sort itself out, or let Keith be the one to get over himself and explain the issue. He’d always cared way too much what people thought of him anyway, but it had always been worse when it came to Keith, who didn’t even have a clue. Never had.

Lance sighed, cheese burning the roof of his mouth this time. “No problem,” he said back.

*

It was nearly four in the morning, and of course, he was pissed as all hell to be awake because of his own chattering goddamn teeth. A squinty-eyed glance at his phone told him that he had class in four hours, and it was so goddamn cold in this house it woke him up.

And he sat there shivering and unable to go back to sleep, curled up in a ball in his sheets for another insufferable fifteen minutes before he cracked. He needed to either find the goddamn thermostat, or find some thicker blankets…

Neither of which wound up happening, cold as he was. He was shivering too hard to make it any further than the foot of his bed, where he’d kicked his socks and shoes earlier – could only handle being out of bed long enough to put his socks back on.

His eyes didn’t want to stay open long enough for him to look around his room, to see if it was possible this was just a ghost too close and freezing him like this, but the more tired he became the less he cared.

“Listen, if there’s a ghost in here, can you _not?_ ” Lance mumbled into his pillow, blankets up entirely over his head as he tried not to think about freezing to death in here somehow. “I have class in the morning, then I have to go straight to work, so I need my sleep and you’re being a dick.”

There was no response back, but Lance was already half asleep, unable to fall fully under, feeling like he’d never stop shivering.

He finally passed out around five a.m., burrowed under his blankets, wearing three pairs of socks and two shirts he would barely remember putting on in the morning.

*

Though it wasn’t unusual at all for Nyma to be a bit intense, it didn’t make Lance any less cranky to walk into class and have her immediately scoff at him. “I thought you weren’t going to make it.”

“Yeah, well,” Lance snapped back, half annoyed and half telling himself to get over it, “I’m here.” As he took his seat beside her, a lidded coffee cup slid along the table into his hand, nudged along by her own.

“You kinda look like shit,” she informed him, straightening the wrap binding blonde dreadlocks out of view so as not to be “distracting.”

“Thanks,” Lance murmured, lifting the cup to his lips. “That’s about the attitude I expect from a Gemini.”

Nyma blinked at him, as unimpressed as someone could be arguably the thousandth time they’d been told that. “So, what’s going on with you? Rough night? Because you didn’t answer any of my texts about studying together on Thursday.”

“I told you I was moving,” Lance reminded her, hushing his voice as their professor walked in.

“Yeah, I remembered, I just thought you’d find time to text me back,” Nyma hissed back, shoving him gently in the arm as their professor started up his projector. “How’s your new place?”

There was a reason Nyma always saved them seats at the back of their classes together. Their professor barely paid attention to them, really, but once he started lecturing, nothing really stopped him, much less two students, among many others, whispering to each other in the back row.

Lance had barely taken the time over the last two days to figure out what he was going to say to anyone about his new place. He felt like it was something he shouldn’t tell too many people – felt like he shouldn’t bring attention to the Witches’ Hill at all. It already still probably got swarmed every Halloween by teenagers much like himself when he’d done the same, but it certainly didn’t need any more unwelcome visitors than those. Not to mention, he didn’t want to be known as the maniac who willingly moved into the most haunted house in the town. He liked to think that title belonged to Keith.

“It’s interesting,” Lance started, choosing his words carefully. “New roommates and all that.”

“Assholes?” Nyma winced.

“No. Two brothers,” Lance admitted, thinking as soon as he said it that that might have been a bad idea.

“Hot?”

“I mean. Yeah,” Lance admitted with a shrug. He had eyes.

“Two hot brothers, huh?” Nyma smirked. “I know for a fact this is a fantasy of yours, McClain.”

“Don’t kink-shame me, Nyma, that was two years ago, and I said I could be convinced to _try_ it, not that I’m going to jump at every chance for it,” he snapped, eyes rolling as she snorted at him.

“You’re telling me that if these two brothers asked you, you wouldn’t jump all over that?” Nyma challenged, her crazy brow waggling suggestively at him as her smirk grew and grew.

“Never gonna happen. Keith doesn’t strike me as the type,” Lance answered, face carefully blank as Nyma _realized_.

“ _Your roommate is Keith?_ ” Nyma echoed a little too loudly. Three people from the row ahead send back heated glares and Lance offered them apologetic glances until they turned back around. “Oh, my god, _Lance_ ,” she cooed, “you moved in with your old high school crush – how awkward is it?”

Lance sputtered. “ _That’s_ the first thing you remember?!”

“You always went totally moon-eyed about him,” she rolled her eyes without any real venom. “It was both the sweetest, and most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen. Mostly annoying there for a while, back when you were dating _me_ , and you were _still_ staring at him,” she muttered.

“ _Nyma_ ,” Lance glared, mortified that she would bring that up, because she wasn’t _wrong_ , just kind of unnecessary in this instance and he thought he’d made it clear some time ago that they _don’t talk about that_. It… hadn’t really been a secret how he’d felt about Keith back in school – to anyone but Keith that was. He didn’t have to imagine how obvious he’d looked, staring after the guy when he passed him in the hallway and lingering on his every word in class, but rarely ever having the balls to talk to him if ever. And when he did, it was utter, rambling, stuttered-out _nonsense_ that always had Keith _looking_ at him like….

Like _that_.

Like he never knew what Lance was doing or why Lance was there, or what Lance even wanted and–

Lance couldn’t really blame him. He’d hardly known what he wanted himself. To make sure he was alright? To see him safe, and maybe get a smile out of him, too, but none of that ever happened and before long, Keith had entirely disappeared, and any image of Keith that Lance saw was entirely in his own sad, desperate, adolescent memories.

Of course, he remembered all the times he’d gone all moon-eyed about Keith.

He remembered doing it every year of his life between the first and the tenth grade – he remembered finally winning Nyma over in high school and thinking immediately that he’d stop worrying about Keith then… but then he didn’t – doing the moon-eyed thing throughout their entire relationship.

Hell, he’d done it _this morning_ , when he walked downstairs into the kitchen for Shiro’s breakfast to find Keith sitting at the kitchen table, picking at the omelet on his plate and sipping thoughtfully from his mug of coffee and _God_. Lance had groaned – rolled his eyes at the frustration of it all, the _injustice_ really – that despite Keith wearing the same clothes he’d slept in and a cheap pair of glasses he was still somehow stunningly, effortlessly gorgeous, and all Lance could think was that it wasn’t _fair_ and that it was too fucking early to have to put up with this.

“What, that’s it?” Nyma asked suddenly, voice impatient like she’d been waiting for his response for a while, and fuck, he was doing it again, _fuck_. “No follow up argument to that? Nothing?” She was smirking, like somehow this proved her right, even though that wasn’t in question. She _was_ right. About the past, anyway.

 _The past_ , he told himself, because habits die hard and that was all that had been this morning – an old habit. “I was _fifteen_ ,” he managed finally, placating smile spreading as his eyes rolled in surrender. “I’m not some stupid lovesick puppy anymore, believe it or not. I guess I’m just glad he turned up safe after all this time.”

Nyma went silent, expression gone pensive as she slid her coffee cup around the table top. She sighed. “That’s really sweet,” she said finally. “I’m glad he’s alright, too. Me and Rolo used to joke that he’d either skipped town or got himself killed somehow,” she admitted, sounding guilty. “Can you maybe be extra nice to him, or something? For me? I know that’s not gonna make up for what an asshole I was to him back then, but, it’s a start for now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this next chapter will be up around the end of the month! Thank you for reading! This chapter was meant to raise questions lol
> 
> Come scream at me on [Tumblr!](https://ambitiousskychild.tumblr.com/) if you fancy ~~~


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Saw the hottest boy at Coast,” the caption said.  
> It was quickly screenshot and send into their group chat where Shay responded: “Incorrect. Hottest boy is Hunk.”  
> “Hunkiest boy is Hunk,” Lance typed back, snorting.  
> “Why not both?” Hunk replied. Which prompted Lance to immediately set to changing Hunk’s chat name to 2Hot2Hunkious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Lance and Hunk hate getting hit on by teenagers

Lance worked at the town’s most popular convenience store, Coast Convenience. It was right off the beach, resting on the drop off, which meant grabbing the carts from the parking lot was kind of detrimental if you didn’t want them to end up gaining momentum, jumping the curb and winding up down on the shore, waiting to be swept away by the ocean during high tide.

He had been working there for almost seven years, Hunk having persuaded him to apply when they were sixteen. There were cons, sure, but honestly, Lance couldn’t even remember them. With pros like: working with his best friend, being a parking lot and a drop down away from the beach, being able to surf after work, the owner being an actual witch who invented half the things he sold, and getting paid on top of it all, sixteen-year-old Lance had thought Hunk had been offering him the world.

In a sense, he had been. Six years later, with plenty of raises, and quite an impressive amount in his savings, he couldn’t complain. Coran told them regularly that he didn’t know what he would have done without them – that there was always a place for them there until they graduated and moved on.

Which made Lance feel a little safer than he should when it came to doing things like unintentionally slacking on punctuality.

He skid a little recklessly into the parking lot just as it started raining, running late since class had gone a little long. He ran across the parking lot and into the store where Hunk was waiting by his usual register and staring straight ahead into space – his most obvious tell that something was weighing on his mind.

“Hey,” Lance greeted, easing into whatever this was.

“Hey,” Hunk said back, tossing a smock to him. “I clocked you in already.”

The very first thing Coran had told them when they were hired six years ago was not to tell anyone else their ID information, only for Hunk and Lance to text it to each other roughly four minutes later. “Thanks. What’s up?”

“So,” Hunk started, drawing out the word. “ _Keith_ , huh?”

“What?” Lance fretted, caught off-guard, but quickly realized that Nyma had probably texted Hunk everything as soon as they’d parted ways, and that he should have seen it coming. “ _Nyma_ ,” he groaned, slipping the smock over his head as Hunk’s grin grew smug. “Yeah,” he surrendered, stepping past the registers, toward the aisles. “Keith is one of my roommates.”

“Where are you going?” Hunk called after him. “I told you, I clocked you in already.”

“Yeah, but I wanna see the schedule,” Lance answered without turning back. If he were going to be more honest about it, he just didn’t want to have this conversation again today.

Or ever, really – he was fine with never again, ideally.

His feelings toward Keith, deep and immersive and _all-consuming_ as they’d been – _had been_ , he insisted even inside the sanctity of his own mind with the same tone and insistence he remembered from his younger siblings insisting that they weren’t tired even as their eyelids drooped – had also been so horrifically and embarrassingly, _mortifying_ to think back on that he genuinely wished he was allowed to just forget them like Keith had pretended to forget _him_.

Coran’s office, though currently lacking Coran, was an organized mess of ideas and junk and floating notepads filled with scribbled purple handwriting, his wastebasket filled to the brim with balled-up sheets up notebook paper, ideas he’d thrown away while brainstorming for his next big product. Three large boxes of his last magical invention sat stacked up against the wall, ready to be displayed when they ran out up front – the giggle bubbles being one of Coran’s better inventions, in Lance’s opinion. They were utterly useless, but Coran didn’t create things to be effective, he created them to be _fun_ and whimsical and what was more whimsical than bubbles that giggled when you blew them?

Granted only kids thought they were fun, and Lance knew that from experience. He’d brought some home for his nieces and nephews last month and his brothers were still amusingly annoyed at him for it.

Coran’s desk remained as cluttered as always – more notes and balled up pieces of paper. A half-full glass of whatever concoction he’d whipped together this morning on his way to work, and his assortment of pens. Framed, on the corner of his desk was the article the town had done on him last year – his pride and joy.

“ _Floodcrest’s Most Interesting Witch_ ,” stood out in bold print just above a picture of Coran flanked by Hunk and Lance outside the store on the hottest day of the year. The article that followed would delve into Coran’s history in Floodcrest and his interests such as, why, as a witch, he ran a convenience store rather than his own witch shop like most other witches. The answer being that Coran was the _best_ kind of batshit, far more creative than the average person – even more than the average witch, in Lance’s humble opinion – and that he was perfectly happy to run a convenience store full of convenient things for the everyday person _as well as_ the everyday witch and be able to amuse his patrons with the creations of his own fantastical mind all in one magical setting.

Moving around the desk to sit at Coran’s chair (which was the most comfortable chair he’d ever sat in, not that he advertised that knowledge because he was a professional who was _certain_ – mostly certain – Coran didn’t mind Lance, his favorite employee, sitting in his office chair but that didn’t mean anyone needed to _know)_ , he took notice of the schedule amidst the rest of the clutter, annotated with purple ink as always.

Alongside the schedule, was Coran's calendar, notifying Lance that, starting at the end of next week, Coran wasn't going to be running the store for ten days and Hunk was temporarily filling in. Lance sort of remembered, now that he thought back on it, Coran saying something about needing to pick up his niece from the airport at some point, and that he'd be taking time off to welcome her back home.

Maybe he'd forgotten the main point of the reason Coran brought it up, mainly only managing to remember asking Coran if his niece was hot, and Coran hexing a mop and sending it flying after him right in the middle of their busiest hour.

As he left Coran's office he found himself sulking a bit on his way back up front, unable to put it past him that he hadn't even been asked to watch the store while Coran would be away, but. Okay, he wasn't stupid, he knew his level of responsibility, and if Coran's decision on this had anything to do with the last time Coran was out sick, and Hunk was held up in traffic getting to work leaving Lance to make the best of his crazy luck by flinging himself across the back aisle in a grocery cart and sending the enchanted merchandise down the aisles after unsuspecting tourists, then he could admittedly see some reason to Coran's choice.

Hunk was tidying up the candy display when Lance made it back to his register. He sent Lance an unimpressed look. "I'm not a goldfish, dude, you didn't distract me from pestering you about Keith by leaving the vicinity."

" _Fine_ ," Lance sighed in surrender. " _Yes_ , Keith and his brother are my roommates. Life is cruel,” he hissed emphatically, hands moving of their own accord to straighten the magazines at his register to have something to look at that wasn’t Hunk’s eager expression. “The brother’s cool, but Keith hates me. Don’t know why. But Keith seems to think I’m playing _dumb,_ but I have no idea what his problem is, so if you remember anything dickish I did to him back in the day, let me know, because I am _lost_ , here.” He cut himself off, running out of breath and steam, and realizing he had gotten quite loud in his frustration. He glanced up at a patient, concerned Hunk and suddenly felt like a child.

"Do you want to talk it out more?" Hunk asked quietly after a pause. And Lance knew that by “talk it out more,” Hunk meant delve deep into all those embarrassing things Lance had felt that he didn’t want to talk about – that he’d done his best to put behind him – that he was doing his best to try to _keep_ behind him, but he had a terrible feeling that Keith’s terrible attitude was only prolonging the inevitable.

“No,” Lance decided. Between Nyma and Hunk he felt he’d been embarrassed enough for one day.

He still hadn’t even told Hunk about the part where he was living with Keith and his brother _on the Witches’ Hill_. And maybe, judging by the concerned, but calm smile on Hunk’s face, that conversation was best saved for another time.

After another contemplative stare, Hunk finally nodded and changed the subject. "So, Shay got that job," he announced, expression a bit smug as Lance's turned excited, grateful for the conversation shift.

"She got it?! That's awesome! When?"

"It's only been a week, but she hasn't wanted me to make a big deal about it in case she jinxes it, even though she's got nothing to worry about," Hunk rolled his eyes fondly. "She's the most talented witch I know. She's gonna be the best witch Tiger's Eye has ever had," he boasted proudly.

"I'm so proud of her," Lance grinned, stepping back as one of the enchanted brooms made a sweep past his feet. "We gotta celebrate."

“That's what I said,” Hunk laughed. "Maybe now that a week is up, she'll be less worried about messing up the balance, or whatever. You should come over for dinner soon – I've been pulling out the stops all week since it's the only celebrating she would let me do.”

“Sounds fun," Lance nodded, wondering if Keith and Shiro would like leftovers if he brought some home – if that was a weird thing to do or not. "Thanks."

“Any time,” Hunk smiled with a shrug. “And you can invite your new roommates sometime, too. Because you're lovable and it'll work out. Nobody's ever stayed mad at you longer than a couple days."

Lance smiled, eyes rolling at his sweet best friend. "Sure, man." Another broom swept by and Lance grabbed it out of the air to look busy as a handful of customers entered through the automatic doors, tried to pretend like he didn't notice the teenagers of their newest group of guests eying them like they recognized them.

"Welcome to Coast," Hunk called out, half-hearted, but still professional – easily another reason Coran was leaving him in charge.

"Evening boys,” Coran called out from toward the back. He had to have been coming from the warehouse – a dolly and two large boxes enchanted to float behind him as he walked. The newest group of customers all stopped in their tracks to watch and Coran probably didn't even notice – had always been so much better at tuning out tourists than Lance was. The boxes floated onto Hunk's register and stacked themselves, patiently waiting to be attended to. Coran turned to Lance, flashing a cheery smile. "So! Comfortable at your new place, Lance?"

"Uh-huh," Lance said, to keep things simple.

"Glad to hear it," Coran nodded, turning to better see both of them. "Glad you've gotten moving done with and you won't be stressed about it, because I wanted to remind you boys that in about a week and half I'm going to be gone to get my niece, if you remember?"

"And Hunk's in charge, yeah, we remember," Lance drawled.

"Great because I've come up with a few ground rules that I'm going to be quizzing you on until I leave," Coran continued, tone announcing, but Lance couldn't help but notice that his gaze had drifted solely onto him. He groaned as Coran raised his voice to continue: "No riding inside the carts in the store. No tricking the tourists into thinking the store is severely haunted."

"But it _is_ severely haunted," Lance tried, knowing it was useless. "It's got the _most_ –”

"No sending hexed items after tourists," Coran continued determinedly as if Lance had never spoken, eye contact level and comically intimidating as he stared Lance down and Hunk snickered. "Just please do not mess with the tourists. No telling them that the store was built over an ancient burial ground," Coran listed off, not giving Lance the chance to comment that it and the rest of the entire town, technically _was_. "For the ten days I'm gone, try to... be like Hunk!"

"Like Hunk," Lance echoed, deadpan. Glancing at said humanitarian personality goal of professionalism and taking in his flattered smile at the compliment, Lance tried to imagine for himself what that would mean.

Just because Coran found the tourists fascinating didn’t mean Lance did. Really, no one else did, which was just another thing serving to show how unusual Coran was. Ever since the town had done that article on Coast last year, getting Coast a bulletin on the town’s list of Must-See Tourist Spots, they’d been hit with all the tourists that would have usually just spent that time on the beach. Instead they made a beeline straight for Coast, to look around and touch all the stuff and break shit and ask Coran, Lance, and Hunk the same questions that had been in the article and all around treat them like specimens or another species.

It was incredibly annoying. But being like Hunk would mean shoving that down and not trying to sneak a break every half hour just to get away from the noise. It would mean being more enthusiastic about being seen as part of those assholes' vacationing experience here – just more of the scenery rather than a living, breathing human being with an even _bigger_ smile on his face while at it.

It sounded like hell, but Hunk did it every day.

The difference between Lance and Hunk was simple: They felt the same things, feelings ran just as deep, but Hunk had always been better at putting a lid on himself, better at masking his emotions until a more appropriate time. He was responsible. Befitting.

These weren't necessarily traits that Lance envied, per se – knew that Coran liked him working here just as he was, but. He wished most of Hunk's and Coran's success and professionalism didn't have to stem from their ability to withstand the belittlement at its best – dehumanization at its worst – from people who visited the town they loved and saw it – saw _them_ , as nothing more than items to tick off of a list of experiences.

Living in a tourist attraction was bad enough. _Being_ one was just about intolerable.

However, he sighed, sent Coran a tired smile. "Sure. What would Hunk do?" He joked, to Coran's delight. Because he also knew that in order to be more like Hunk, he'd have to complain about this ordeal a whole lot less.

As if he were being tested, he heard the familiar sound of a bunch of heavy shit hitting the floor a few aisles over and he sighed, squeezed his eyes shut as he heard the brooms sweep past their registers to get to the mess.

Lance looked up, eyes following the brooms to see, as he feared, the teenaged tourists and their parents from before, stepping around the magic brooms and lining up at his register with their phones out, aimed at Coran, who didn’t look nearly as annoyed as Lance thought he should.

Hunk plastered on his professional smile, but there was no mistaking the dead void in his eyes and Lance tried his best to mimic it – knew he wasn't coming anywhere close with how tired he already felt.

"Hey," started one of the girls, looking up at him with an overexcited smile as she held her phone up to capture him. Looking over her shoulder he could see what he assumed to be the parents talking to Coran, bombarding him with attention, leaving the teens to bother him and Hunk. He could see the other two teens at Hunk’s register, phones also out. "Sorry about our moms,” the teen started, tucking bright red hair behind her ear. “They got all excited to check out this place after the bus tour we took yesterday,” she explained.

Lance looked sheepishly down at the phone in her hands, most definitely recording him, then back up into her eyes. One of the other teen girls stood close behind her, leaning her hip against the counter and scrolling through her own phone between intermittent, not so inconspicuous glances right into his eyes. “It’s fine,” he shrugged, as casually as he could. “It happens all the time. No big deal.”

“So, my friend here thinks you’re cute,” the girl blurted out, to the absolute horror of the curly brown-haired girl leaning against his counter, feigning nonchalance up until that very second. “ _Morgan_!” the girl hissed, but the red headed girl continued, sly smile going a bit goofy at her friend’s reaction, and Lance couldn’t help but chuckle – would never forget being a teen. “There was this article about this place in the building where we went to sign up for our tour and we saw you and the other guy, in the picture with him,” she explained, pointing inconspicuously over her shoulder at Coran talking with four sweet-seeming middle-aged women. “We were kinda hoping you’d be here,” she rushed out, beginning to look a bit flustered, herself.

Lance tried his hardest to turn his sigh into to something of a surprised laugh. “Aw, I’m really flattered,” Lance said, smiling sweetly down at the both of them, because he _was_ , honestly. He just desperately wished that the only people who hit on him weren’t teenage tourists.

“So, we were wondering if you and your friend wanted to hang out later or something, when you guys get off work,” the redhead – Morgan – continued, blue eyes bright and hopeful as her friend behind her looked about ready to sink into the floor.

Trying to hide his grin, Lance looked between the girls’ shoulders to see Hunk in much the same predicament, smile gone tight and awkward like it did in… pretty much this exact situation.

Lance turned back to the girls before him, almost hating to squash the hope in their eyes. They seemed nice after all, but Lance had dealt enough with his own little sister’s friends trying to flirt with him to never want to have to interact with another teenager again. “Sorry ladies, Hunk and I are both taken,” he said simply, leaving it at that, knowing it was less likely to upset them than if he were to straight out call them children.

“Damn. Should have known,” the redhead said, sounding a bit disappointed, but not surprised, which was also flattering, considering Lance was definitely lying. She shrugged. “Oh well. Didn’t hurt to ask, see?” She said, turning a small smile toward her friend who looked slightly less embarrassed, something about it sweet enough to make this encounter a bit less annoying than most others like it.

Lance wound up checking out their items while Hunk was passed one of the mom’s phones to take a group photo of them all huddled around Coran who, of course, looked absolutely delighted. Coran was a magnetic kind of guy, Lance thought to himself with a small smile as he scanned and bagged their items – the typical tourist stuff. Snacks, drinks, something from Coran’s display of self-made affects, in this case, the giggle bubbles, and usually a small potted cactus or fern, but this time, they had selected the witch hazel.

And Lance had never really had a clear understanding on what it did, and severely doubted these tourists were any more knowledgeable on the subject. But he was pretty sure the fact that it was called “witch hazel” in a witch town was the reason they made any money off of it at all.

*

Lance grimaced into his camera, hair a mess, eyes tired as the shutter clicked. Laughing breathily to himself at the image, he tapped on the black bar across the photo. “ _Stop calling us that_ ,” he typed, then sent it off in response to Shay’s newest snapchat story.

Before he could even put his phone down, in came a snap from Nyma. She was lying on her bed, books stacked behind her beside a notebook filled with chicken scratch. She had her dreds back in a headwrap and her glasses on as she flashed a peace sign. “ _Aren’t you two adorable?!?!11_ ” the black bar read.

Lance sighed, screenshot the image, then clicked back over to Shay’s snap story where there was a handful of low-angle photos, taken of Lance and Hunk while at work. He could see familiar red hair at the edge of one of the images and found himself a bit amused, but not surprised. “ _Saw the hottest boy at Coast_ ,” the caption said.

It was quickly screenshot and send into their group chat where Shay responded: “ _Incorrect. Hottest boy is Hunk_.”

“ _Hunkiest boy is Hunk_ ,” Lance typed back, snorting.

“ _Why not both?_ ” Hunk replied. Which prompted Lance to immediately set to changing Hunk’s chat name to _2Hot2Hunkious_.

Plaxum joined the chat with her own screenshots. One of Hunk looking flustered and adorable beyond belief and the other of Lance from just around his candy display. Probably before the shyer girl finally stepped forward. " _Look who made it onto my Twitter again_ ," Plaxum said with a wink emoji.

He sighed again, lying back against his pillows. It was one thing to have it constantly circling his own head and entirely another thing to have it spoken into actual existence by another person.

Especially when those people were his friends, and they meant well.

" _OMG remember Alex from Target?_ " Hunk typed back. " _That's us except he got to go on Ellen._ "

Lance guffawed, fingers taking to his screen. " _WHERE YOU AT ELLEN??????_ "

He gave up when he received a snap from his brother cooing about the Twitter images, opting to shimmy under his sheets. He put his phone on the charger and stuck his headphones in the jack, clicking Spotify open.

His phone continued to vibrate. He shut his eyes.

With his eyes squeezed shut and the world blocked out, he _knew_ it wasn’t the end of the world. He knew it didn’t define him, and that it didn’t mean anything. That Coran got it even worse than he and Hunk did, and he was perfectly fine with it… That those people eventually left Floodcrest and probably never thought about him again, and his friends didn’t know it bothered him, but it just….

It was just, he’d had aspirations and goals and dreams just like anyone else. And maybe they were unattainable right now, but he could deal with where he was in the meantime as long as he was at least doing it for _himself_. He couldn’t just regress and lessen and stagnate into a fun _thing_ for other people to poke at and take pictures of as if he was there just for that purpose. As if he was never a person at all.

And maybe, he told himself again and again and _again_ over the years, he was being a little dramatic about it. But his feelings on it had never been something he could just _control_ until they were convenient. He turned over, burying himself under his blanket against the chill of his room and nuzzling his face further into a cold pillow.

He couldn’t even control how the other people in this town saw him.

*

Drowsy and disoriented, he felt like he’d been unconscious for years and years when he came to. Something horrendous had happened. Something that hurt him all over – something he couldn’t stop feeling, hot and unyielding all over his skin like _fire_ –

He gasped, eyes snapping open, then trying to droop back shut to block out the smoke – to send him back under. He blinked the water out of his eyes, blurry vision finding him surrounded by black clouds, hands trapped behind him. He didn’t have the strength to try pulling free anymore.

All he could hear was _screaming_. Coming from all around him – coming from his own _mouth_ because–

He was burning alive. He was tied down and burning alive as the girl next to him cried and another girl to his right was glowing from her eyes somehow and the flames grew hotter and hotter, but–

But he wasn’t supposed to _be_ here, all he’d ever done his whole life was the right thing, he wasn’t one of _them_. But maybe… maybe he _was_ evil, somehow. Maybe he just didn’t know it. Maybe it was too deep down inside himself for him to know, but everyone else did somehow. He hadn’t meant to lie to everyone…

His family. His sisters and his wife… He was going to die. He’d be a cautionary tale. _“Do not go near the woods.” “You must not look suspicious.” “Anyone could be a witch.” “The truth will find you out.” “If you are holy, do holy things.”_

It was cool then – his skin no longer scorching but stinging as water swallowed him. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t fathom where it came from. Couldn’t imagine dying by fire and water like this.

He couldn’t breathe, hands still bound behind him and muscles useless after so much pain, he was going to _drown_ – wiped from this earth like a worm, turned against by his own people.

He was sure he was fading when he felt hands around his own, untying them from behind him, then pulling him up.

He was coughing up water, sputtering on bile and saliva and blood. His eyes remain shut, terrified to see where he was. He started crying at the feeling of his skin tingling as the air hit it. _This can’t be more fire, please God, no more fire–_

There were hands on him, pushing down on his chest and it _hurt_ as more and more water spewed from his mouth. His sobs wracked his body, and he wished it would all just stop. “No… no…” he begged, trying to fight hard to stay numb – to stop feeling, to stop _hurting_.

He fought with what very little he had left for it all to stop – begged and cried and pleaded until there was nothing. It was slow, but he was fading.

He felt relieved.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Lance gasped, a blue light just over him as he jerked awake in his new bed, in his new room, freezing his balls off. Frantically, he patted the skin on his arms – still there, not melted off. He ripped at his blankets, sighing in relief to see his legs looking just as they had when he’d fallen asleep, and he tried to calm down–

He placed a hand hard over his chest, breathing hard as his heart raced beneath his – beneath his unburned, intact _skin_ –

“ _Fuck_ ,” he wheezed again, voice thin and weak as he rubbed at his eyes. Shaking, he lowered his feet onto the floor just to test, just to make sure – decided to get some water while at it.

Somehow he knew he wasn’t alone just before he’d woken up. Someone had been here – something had caused that, right? He’d just fucking gone through _dying_ , he was – he was going to be okay, right?

He descended the stairs quietly, noting Keith asleep on the couch again, bundled up in a blanket that Shiro had most likely laid over him before going to bed himself. He almost felt desperate enough to wake him – just to have someone tell him that he was really awake right now, that his dream hadn’t been some hellish sign of things to come, or–

He pat his hands against his face as he passed Keith on the couch and slipped into the kitchen. He grabbed the biggest glass from the cupboard and turned on the tap. “You’re safe,” he told himself in a calm whispered mantra as the water ran – a sound so usual and familiar, it helped him breathe like normal. He took a shaky sip, reminded himself that Shiro had warned him about this, that this came with his new territory, and that it didn’t necessarily have to mean anything. _In fact_ , he thought to himself, this could even be good news, right? This meant the ghosts were fucking around with him after all. He wasn’t some… _special case_ all over again – he was having the same problems Shiro had. He was normal.

He couldn’t shake the _shudders_ , though – the residual discomfort under his skin at the troubling possibility of having just been someone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot? Started lol
> 
> I hope this was enjoyable to read!! If so, please feel free to come scream at me on ~~[Tumblr!](https://ambitiousskychild.tumblr.com/)~~ if you fancy
> 
> Chapter 4 goes up around mid November!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hey, uh,” Lance directed his eyes to the skillet, watching the eggs sizzle, hoping Shiro couldn’t read his face. “Where’s Keith at today?”  
> “Work,” Shiro answered. “Why?”  
> “Shiro, can I talk to you about something?”  
> “About Keith?” Shiro asked, looking a bit confused.  
> “No, it’s a – it’s a ghost thing.”  
> “Oh,” Shiro uttered. Lance felt his muscles tense in apprehension like some kind of fight reflex.  
> He took a breath, trying to stop feeling the dream all around him, trying to tell himself he wasn't breathing smoke right now. “Yeah. I had a really weird dream last night and it really fucked me up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo-hoo y'all wanna pretend like this isn't almost two months late bc i doooooo

He hadn’t been able to stay asleep after that.

He’d fallen asleep time after time only to jerk back awake like his body was afraid to go through that experience again. He gave up when he opened his eyes to see that it was morning outside his window.

His room was still freezing, and he knew there was a ghost around, knew the feeling, became well acquainted with it as a child being unable to see them, only feel the chill when they were near. He didn’t like being thrown back into being blind.

Tossing his blankets off his body he had the thought, for what had to be the hundredth time, that it couldn’t have only been a dream. Not that he knew what it was, but with the ache still throbbing in his heart that his family was going to miss him so much now that he’d died… he knew somehow it wasn’t just a dream, it couldn’t be.

He felt sluggish and weak, body tired and exhausted and mind working on overdrive. As he headed downstairs, he felt like he couldn't even see colors right, he was so tired.

He found Shiro in the kitchen, coffee brewing on the counter as he scrambled eggs for himself, humming nonsensically and bobbing his head a bit at the stove. He looked over at the kitchen door swinging open, a greeting smile on his face. “Morning, Lance. Sleep good?” he asked conversationally, conveniently.

Lance, tired and damn-near delirious decided he was taking that as a sign that he had to talk about it – at the very least, that it would be okay to. Shiro was the one who had warned him about impending ghost nightmares in the first place. He hummed in a lazy greeting, stalling as he sat at the kitchen table.

“Want some eggs?” Shiro asked, though he had already started to crack another egg over the skillet.

Lance nodded, unsure of how to politely say _“I’m having a crisis and I feel like I was just murdered, how the fuck could I eat?_ ” “Sure. Hey, uh,” he directed his eyes to the skillet, watching the eggs sizzle, hoping Shiro couldn’t read his face. “Where’s Keith at today?”

“Work,” Shiro answered. “Why?”

“Shiro, can I talk to you about something?”

“About Keith?” Shiro asked, looking a bit confused.

“No, it’s a – it’s a ghost thing.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Shiro uttered. Lance felt his muscles tense in apprehension like some kind of fight reflex.

He took a breath, trying to stop feeling the dream all around him, trying to tell himself he wasn't breathing smoke right now. “Yeah. I had a really weird dream last night and it really fucked me up.”

“What happened?” Shiro asked back, eggs forgotten in the skillet in his hand. Lance sighed and went over to turn the stove off before Shiro burned the house down.

With another sigh, he braved through explaining the burning, then the drowning, the guilt he barely understood, then the unsettling _finality,_ the nothingness that followed. Talking about it aloud seemed to make it worse, made the panic and terror come back, had him lamenting the loss of the family he’d never see again, even though he’d never met them – even though he didn’t even know their _names_ , and he was so afraid to mention that part. Like somehow, it’d make this whole thing that much stranger. Like he wouldn’t be able to handle whatever Shiro’s response might have been.

“Wow,” Shiro said, somber and hesitant. “You literally felt… I mean, you felt all these things like you really went through them. You still feel like it’s happening?”

Lance felt like Shiro was looking right into him, and even worse like that was entirely possible. “Yeah. I know I didn’t drown, and I didn’t burn, but my brain keeps trying to tell me I can’t breathe. That I’m… that I’m not entirely alright.”

“When I warned you about this place, I definitely wasn’t thinking anything like that was going to happen to you,” he admitted. It made Lance feel some odd combination of lost and overdramatic all at once. “Mine aren’t… anything like that. They’re more like really bad stress dreams, usually. I used to get them anyway before I lived here, but once I moved in, they were so much worse. Before, they were just the usual. Stress dreams about being back at military school and fucking up somehow, or failing Keith somehow,” he shrugged, trying to make light of it, but Lance could tell those dreams alone bothered him enough. “Moving in here – I mean, my dreams were still about me and my experiences, just… now they’re… now they’re _heavier_ , if that makes any sense. Like, I know I’m dreaming now, but I can’t always wake up when I realize that,” he explained, eyes blankly ahead of him.

“And you still wanna live here?” Lance murmured without thinking.

Shiro hesitated a moment. “All this is bigger than me,” he answered finally. “There’s just some people you go through shit for, but that’s a story for another day.”

Lance rolled his eyes, but otherwise managed to refrain from pushing his luck, asking just who was _worth_ all this to someone like Shiro – already had a pretty good idea that this person stomped around in boots all day and smiled like it killed him.

“But that’s me,” Shiro said, eyes open and understanding while Lance turned a bit perplexed. “ _You_ don’t have to put up with all this. That’s the whole point of the trial run thing. It’s why I warned you so much in the beginning. So, if you wanna call it quits, I’d understand. You wouldn’t owe us anything.”

It struck him then that the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. He… hadn’t even _considered_ getting the hell out of here once since he’d stepped through the front door four days ago. The more he thought about it, though, the more he felt a resounding _no_ reverberating around his brain, and before he could even figure out why–

“I can’t leave,” Lance heard himself say, wrenched out from his chest like they weren’t even his words, but it was what he _felt_. He felt like he should be taking Shiro right up on his offer, but even louder was a feeling like he was _stuck_ here now. Like removing himself would hurt him somehow, and the hardest thing to do at the moment was to try to explain that.

“Are you sure?” Shiro asked, eyes narrowing. He had the look of someone who had just heard something utterly insane and therefore didn’t trust his judgement, not that Lance could blame him. “Okay, then,” he relented skeptically, doubtfully. “You’re an adult. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but my girlfriend could help you. She’s a witch – really powerful. She helps me all the time with this stuff. I’ll call her and tell her the situation and when she comes back into town, we can make sure you’re actually okay, because you… do not sound like it right now, to be honest.”

“I have a friend who’s a witch,” Lance offered up. “I can go see her today since your girlfriend’s out of town. Shay’s pretty powerful – maybe she can help me until your girlfriend gets back.”

“As long as you get away from the house for a bit and get some fresh air,” Shiro said, expression still heavily concerned. It made Lance feel trapped under a microscope. “I'll text Allura after breakfast.”

Lance sent his own text to Shay as they ate, asking if she knew anything about strange dreams or deciphering them. After a quick response affirming that she was free and an offer for him to come over, he finished the rest of his breakfast and went to get dressed.

Hunk and Shay lived right in the middle of downtown – basically a tourist juncture. The town was normally busy, but especially so with today being a Friday. Lance was able to maneuver easily through the throngs of people littering the sidewalks headed for the beach, or the strip mall, or the historical sight of the town from muscle memory alone.

The sound of rumbling from above made him frown. He’d left an umbrella back in his room, which was a testament to how out of it he was – it was always ten seconds away from raining. He jogged the rest of the way knowing getting rained on was the last thing he wanted to have to deal with today.

Hunk lived on the fourth floor of his apartment complex and Lance took the stairs two at a time, getting impatient and antsy. He knocked until Hunk answered, expression a bit sheepish like he didn’t know quite what to say and what not to say with the reasons he knew Lance was here. “Hey, Lance,” he said, stepping aside to let Lance in. He shut the door behind him and gestured to the small plaid couch given to them by Hunk’s moms against the wall. “Shay’s getting her stuff together,” he explained, sitting beside him.

“Okay,” Lance said, not knowing what else was appropriate. “Thanks again, by the way.”

Hunk shrugged. “We’re glad to help.”

Lance smiled, felt a bit of his discomfort ebb away. He was scared and worried and barely felt like himself, but at least he had fantastic friends.

Shay emerged from the hallway then, giving Lance a deep once over that almost felt intrusive, but he knew she was trying to read his aura. She had her organized selection of stones and a small pocket-sized notebook bundled up in her arms.

“So, how are you feeling?” She started, light voice lilting in a sheepish chuckle as she tried to lighten the mood. She sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor, taking the lid off her stone box. She reached behind her ear for a pen as she flipped open her notebook for a free page. “What was your dream, exactly?”

He could feel her energy encompassing the room like gas filling a container – intentionally serene, meant to wind him down, and normally he hated feeling like his emotions were being tampered with, but this time, he'd take it – was well aware that the only thing keeping him from flipping out was Shay, and the fact that he was so damn exhausted.

Sighing and fighting against the guilt he felt for talking, he explained again about the sentencing that he hadn’t seen, but somehow knew happened anyway, the burning, and the shame and grief and the _dread_ and worry for his family and how they were going to make it without him, the drowning, then the rescuing…

Then dying anyway.  The relief of it.

“It feels like… there’s something really dark and heavy right here,” he explained, placing his hand over his chest. “Like a pit or something. My skin feels like it’s on fire and I can’t breathe, and my head keeps going in circles and making me dizzy and the air smells like smoke, and my chest wants me to ‘ _make it right_ ,’ even though I don’t know what’s _wrong_ – aside from the fact that my brain keeps trying to tell me that I’m _dead_ ,” he rushed out. “I… really want to find this family that isn’t mine and make sure they’re okay, but I get the feeling they’re long dead, too,” he paused, swallowing a lump in his throat in disbelief. “And that makes me feel really, really sad. Like my entire world is gone.” He shut his eyes in frustration. “I know that these aren’t my feelings, but they’re coming out of whatever this _thing_ is I feel in my chest and they _feel_ like mine.”

The silence that followed was nearly as invasive as Shay’s intentionally calming aura and Lance crossed his arms, tried to sink into the couch. He felt like he would cry any minute and, even more concerning, the impending tears overrode any pressing questions he had of why and how this was happening.

“Come sit down here, Lance,” Shay said finally, voice soft and eyes gentle. The air around him spiked with enough serenity that he should have felt better, but he only began to feel more anxious as he lowered himself onto the floor across from Shay. She sent him a questioning smile as he crossed his legs, mirroring her. “Give me your hands,” she instructed, holding out her own.

Silently, he placed his hands into hers as Shay shut her eyes, face screwing up a bit in concentration as she searched. She had described this process to him once before when he was still trying to understand. The process of shutting everything else out and trying to will her aura inside someone else’s to find the weak points – the tainted and uncertain bits and try to pull at it, unravel it, understand it and see what can be done externally to fix it. Lance wasn't too sure she could fix him, if this all amounted to his soul – the most damaged thing about him.

“Okay,” she murmured, eyes still squeezed shut. “You were definitely touched by something very old recently. Right in your chest like you said. And in your head. I think that dream got put into you. Seeing this doesn't tell me why though,” she sighed out, voice sounding a bit frustrated. “But the way you described it. I don’t know, I just think it sounds an awful lot like the flood.”

He’d thought that himself, briefly, during the hours he couldn’t sleep, but hadn’t really spent much more time on it since he’d simply assumed it to be true. What other event did he know of that had involved flood-level amounts of water beside the flood that made the town? The fire part was new, but he still just… knew. His chest ached a long, drawn out beat, and Lance knew that Shay wasn’t wrong. “Pretty sure that’s right. That’s what it felt like. _Feels_ like,” he amended, as the aching persisted. “Listen,” he started bravely, forcing his terrified and confused brain into silence and instead, going with the terrible aching in his chest. “I’ve been really scared to think this since it happened, but you said I was touched by something old recently so… is it possibly not so crazy that some ghost that died in the flood is somehow… making me live it?”

“No,” Shay answered, opening her careful eyes. “In fact, I’ve been trying to find a way to break that to you.”

Lance scoffed at his shitty luck. He felt like had no right to complain about something he was well-warned about, but it couldn’t have been _so_ out of line, however, not to have expected quite _this_ level of hellish haunted house nightmare. “Can you see anything else?”

“Not really,” Shay admitted, voice lamenting and apologetic as she squeezed his hands just a bit tighter. “Just that there seem to be a few different touches to your soul,” she revealed. “Like there were a few other attempts to reach you before this one.”

“ _What_?” Lance croaked out, right along with Hunk, who sounded just as disturbed as Lance felt. “Oh, my god, that’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever fucking heard,” he moaned.

“So, can you tell if they’re from the same spirit?” Hunk asked quietly.

“They’re not,” Shay answered back, hands still circling Lance’s.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Lance swore. “The ghosts in my new house haven’t wanted me to see them for some reason, but they’re _touching_ me?”

“Wait. You didn’t tell us that,” Hunk murmured, face an unreadable frown. “That’s kind of big, why wouldn’t you tell us about not being able to see ghosts? That’s kind of a whole thing with you remember? Something could be _wrong_ if you can’t–”

“It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, I could still see ghosts,” Lance rushed out. “I could see the ones around town and at school and stuff, just not the ones at the house. It’s been four days, and I still haven’t _seen_ one.” His gaze dropped down onto the carpet, the more unimpressed Hunk’s expression became. “But… this sounds like they might all just be flocking to me in my _sleep_ , which is _way_ fucking worse.”

“Did you insult them somehow when you moved in?” Hunk asked. He looked like there were other things he’d also like to say but was otherwise trying to stay on topic, though Lance knew he would stew on it regardless of what they were talking about.

“I didn’t insult _anyone_ ,” Lance insisted. “I swear. You know me, I’d never disrespect the spirits. Hell, when I realized they didn’t want to be around me I was just going to leave it alone, but now this is happening, and… it’s gonna be really hard to leave this alone now! I don’t understand why they wouldn’t want to be around me. I’m _delightful_ – I’m normally like _catnip_ for….” He groaned, tired and confused and a scared, aching mess. He had always been something of a freakish beacon for the spirits in this town – ever since his first night on the Witches’ Hill when he could finally communicate with them. He’d been told most of his life that his soul was kind of wrong, but it was usually a quirky complement rather than something that allowed him a direct pathway to the true hellishness of ghost thoughts. “What the hell is going on?” he murmured.

“Hang on,” Shay said thoughtfully, standing up and heading back for their room. “I might have a book that could be helpful.”

A moment passed wherein Shay very audibly riffled around in her room before Hunk spoke up again. “So, where did you move?”

“Huh?” Lance stalled.

“You never said where you moved. It could be helpful to know,” Hunk explained, a light shrug lifting his shoulders – forced casual, Lance could tell. “You know I’m in with the historical society. I could try and figure out which ghosts are there for you. It’d be easier to figure out what’s happening if we knew who they were. Maybe Shay could come by and coax them out.”

Somehow, he didn’t want to tell Hunk where he was living still. He didn’t know why, couldn’t place a direct finger on it when he thought about it. Maybe because Keith was one of his roommates, and he just couldn’t imagine those two sides of his life colliding in any constructive way. Maybe it was the pit in his chest that wanted him alone and vulnerable to weird, nightly, nonconsensual soul-touch dream transfers. Maybe it was just that he didn’t want his best friends to judge him for moving into the most haunted place in town and then complaining that very haunted things were happening to him. Probably _d.) all of the above_ , if he was going to be honest about it.

But, somewhere in the midst of his stalling and option-weighing, Shay had emerged with a thick book under her arm, and something about the fact that Shay and Hunk had paused their entire day to solve Lance’s problems made him feel terrible for even considering the possibility of lying to them to begin with.

“I moved onto the Witches’ Hill,” he answered lowly. “With Keith and his brother. Because his brother had been requesting a roommate for a while. The rent’s cheap, and I’m broke, and stupid, and trying to prove myself.”

Which fed into a shocked silence that stretched and stretched just this side of too damn long before Hunk finally cleared his throat. “ _Oh_ ,” he announced. “A lot of things make sense now.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell us that?” Shay pressed, sitting before him on the floor.

“Broke, and stupid, and trying to prove myself,” Lance repeated, flashing a small smile that, luckily, got him two small smiles back. “It’s been weird with Keith. The last thing I want to do is come across like an ass, and I know you would go crazy trying to see inside that house,” he shot at Hunk. “He’d try to kick me out so fast…. And anyway, this stuff happening to me is still really weird, regardless of the fact that my dumb ass was basically asking for it by moving in there. It made more sense to keep it to myself.”

“You were worried we’d judge you?” Hunk scoffed. “The only reason me and Shay can afford this place is because some guy died in here, dude. We probably would have moved in there no problem if not for this place.”

“I remember,” Lance chuckled. He also remembered his own morally reprehensible stint of trying to find cheap apartments where someone had died, hoping to get as lucky with rent as his best friend. “Aside from… this development,” Lance scoffed sardonically, “it’s not that scary over there for people with normal souls. Apparently, Keith knows how to make sigils, and he warded the house, so they can do whatever it is they need to do there. Pretty much the only thing that happens to them is nightmares and cold spots just like anywhere else here.”

“We’re not judging you,” Shay said reassuringly. Lance could feel the reassurance in the air almost immediately. “As long as you’re safe, and you tell us if something goes wrong, and you’re doing that.”

“Honestly, I think you’d move into a dumpster if Keith lived there,” Hunk said.

“And we’re not _teasing_ you either,” Shay said, tone sharp toward Hunk, but an amused grin peeked through. “I’m glad you told us, though. Now I know what I’m dealing with.” It was a lesson, really, in the importance of proper communication. Or some shit the pit in Lance’s chest was keeping him from fully processing.

She opened her box of stones, rooting around as Lance tried to peer inside. “Okay,” she contemplated, considering her options. “These should work fine,” she said, hand leaving the box holding two medium-sized stones in her hand. One was chunky, like a roughly cut layered block and tinted foamy turquois, the other clear and cylindrically hexagonal. She held the turquois one in her free hand. “This one’s Blue Tourmaline,” she said, “and this one,” she held up the clear one, “is clear Quartz. The Tourmaline should help your intuition with the spirit side. The Quartz is going to enhance your aura, so you’ll be a more powerful presence. And it’s basically an amplifier and it’ll make the Tourmaline stronger,” she explained, placing them gently into his hands.

Her magic always lingered around the things she made or touched with her own hands and as she passed the stones onto him, his head already felt clearer, his disposition calmer than it would be naturally. “Wait, what do I need these for? What am I doing?” Lance puzzled.

“You’re going to draw the ghosts to you, so you can talk to them and ask what’s going on,” Shay explained like it was obvious. It was, but she was too nice to say it. “These will bring them out.”

And Lance felt that even if this plan of action made complete sense in theory, maybe it was a bit too drastic and fast-moving for something he’d only just found out about. He looked down cautiously at the stones in his hand, innocent and lifeless on the surface, but teeming with energy and warmth in his palms and knew he had to get over it. “So, what do I do, wave them around, screaming like a banshee, or…”

Shay rolled her eyes. “Well, you could, but I’m sure they’d laugh at you. You just need to have them on you if you try talking to them. You just need to concentrate on being able to communicate with them.”

“And they’ll listen?”

Shay’s expression went uncertain. “They’ll show up if you do it right, but I can’t guarantee they’ll listen.”

He wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea of _forcing_ a spirit to do anything if he were going to be honest, but _they_ were the ones using his body as a nightmare projection screen for… some reason, so. He’d say he’d earned his right to some answers at the very least. “Thanks, witch doctor,” he grinned up at her, dropping the stones into his jacket pockets.

“I’m not a witch doctor,” she said, as usual, though she looked flattered every time.

“Either way, Tiger’s Eye just hired the best witch they’re ever going to have,” Lance winked, laughing lightly as Shay groaned, turning accusing eyes onto her boyfriend.

“You really couldn’t keep it to yourself?” She asked, an exasperated smile on her face.

Hunk shrugged, expression unapologetic. “What? I’m proud of you!”

Rolling her eyes, Shay sighed. “I suppose it’s been long enough that I don’t have to keep my fingers crossed anymore.”

“There you go,” Hunk smiled, turning his wide smile onto Lance. “Hey, why don’t you hang around for a while until you’ve calmed down and processed some more. This has been some pretty heavy stuff,” he offered, eyes checking down to the stones in his pocket.

Lance, whose mind was still stuck on the _ghosts-touching-me-while-I-sleep_ part, and not wanting to have to deal with that quite yet, nodded emphatically. “Yeah, holy shit,” he sighed.

“Cool, then you should stick around for lunch,” Hunk smiled. “I did extend the offer yesterday.”

Shay, upon further prodding finally gushed full on about Tiger’s Eye and how much she loved it. Her boss was out of town presently, but her boss’ assistant was the one that hired her. Training had taken barely any time at all, with Shay having been even more talented than she realized – Lance and Hunk basically had to blackmail her into being proud of herself and boasting her skill.

By nightfall, Lance knew that Shay’s aura and intense focus on _his_ probably had the most to do with it, but he felt better. He felt like the pit in his chest was just an ache rather than a black hole stealing all his energy. Like his thoughts and emotions were mostly his again. He felt like he could handle these feelings, and whoever put them there, without completely dissolving somehow into the deep, dark abyss forced inside his core.

When the sky broke, they piled into Hunk’s van while it was still a light drizzle rather than the usual torrential downpour.

The van was old and barely had any safety features aside from its own indestructible outer exterior, passed down to him by his moms who were in their fifties. They’d bought it off a man in Hunk’s old neighborhood who was, to this day, a hippie. There were no backseats, but there was shag carpeting, which was, in Lance’s humble opinion, way better.

He could feel the stones Shay had given him tumbling against each other in his jacket pocket as the van lurched forward and Lance slid across the back. He clenched them in his hand, somehow afraid they’d get damaged from it.

He brought them out of his pocket and looked at them on the surface of his palm. They hardly looked like anything – like something rare he might have found on the beach in his rock collecting days. He couldn’t deny the pull they had to them – partly in fact that they’d belonged to Shay and her magic was lingering, but. Well, he felt like they _wanted_ to be used, like they were burning in his palms with intent, almost.

He could feel Shay calming the air in the van for him before he could start worrying about how his next ghost adventures were going to go. He could see Hunk smiling in the rearview mirror, saw him place his hand over hers on the center console. He saw her lace their fingers, and for a split second, he felt like he was in love so strong, _he_ wanted to hold hands with Hunk, before he was forced abruptly back into feeling calm, and Shay was blushing, tossing an apologetic, sheepish smile back at Lance and causing him to chuckle.

When the van stopped, Hunk and Shay twisted their bodies in their seats toward Lance but couldn’t seem to drag their eyes away from the house. Lance tried to hold on to the calmness in the air. He breathed it in and desperately held it in his lungs as he tugged the side door back, pulling up his hood.

“Hey,” Hunk said, stopping him by the arm. Lance turned back to see Hunk reaching awkwardly around his own seat and Shay looking just as concerned. “Call us if anything happens. I mean it – anything. You don’t have to hide anything from us, man.”

His chest felt warm for two seconds before the pit was sucking it away, but Lance didn’t care. For the thousandth time, he thought he had to have the best friends in the world. “Thanks guys. I’ll let you know,” he promised, sliding the door shut behind him and trekking up the slightly slippery incline of the hill.

Hunk’s headlights didn’t recede until he’d made it onto the porch. He turned to see Hunk and Shay waving below before driving the other way. Waving back uselessly, he left his muddy shoes beside the door, taking note suddenly, of a bike on the other side of it, leaning against the front window. A bike that certainly hadn’t been there when he’d left earlier that morning.

Green and old-fashioned with a light pink basket on the handle bars, Lance found himself confused. As he fished around his pocket for the house keys, he scoffed, kind of started to hope for the hell of it, that it was Keith’s.

He unlocked the door to a number of notable things, the first being Shiro, just about actually sighing with relief at the sight of him.

“Good, I was hoping you’d get back before I went to bed,” he started. “Allura gave me some tips to tell you and I wrote them on a sticky note and put it on your dresser, so you’d have them.”

And Lance nodded along to the best of his abilities, because he needed to thank Shiro for caring – for trying to help him fix it, but Keith was sitting there beyond them on the couch, overly large book in his hands as he turned unreadable eyes onto Lance, then onto his brother and asked: “Wait, what’s going on that you needed to call Allura about?” Which was notable only for the fact that he very audibly _didn’t_ sound like he’d rather Lance be dead, and though his voice betrayed nothing, the fact that his eyes were still on him made Lance want to accuse him of something insane like caring about him or at the very least, basic human decency.

But by far, the most notable thing in the room was sitting on the couch right beside Keith, surrounded by books, and plastic, and scraps of metal. She was wearing a pair of denim overall shorts that left her bare legs exposed, stretched out onto the coffee table as she twisted the screwdriver in her hand into whatever hunk of metal it was occupying the space in her lap. She had long, sandy brown hair pulled back into a headband, but her bangs had sprung free, hanging over her forehead in a disorganized clump Lance doubted she even noticed.

The long stretch of silence appeared to catch her attention and she lifted her head up, eyes jumping around the room until they landed on him. Honey brown and sizing him up like he knew she’d done years before again and again – every time he couldn’t get a word through his teeth trying to talk to Keith.

“Oh, so this is the new roommate?” She asked, lips quirking up at the side the longer she looked at him. She placed the screwdriver onto the couch beside her. “You could have told me I knew the guy,” she chided Keith with a quick glance, then her gaze floated back to Lance.

“You know me?” Lance asked, at a loss for anything else to say that wouldn’t betray all the weird reasons he also knew _her_.

“Of course, I do,” she scoffed, smile just a bit more serene. “Most popular senior at my high school. Lance, huh?”

“Yeah, but I–”

“Well, despite everything Keith has said, I’m pretty excited to officially meet you,” she drawled, expression turning amused. She grabbed up her screwdriver, lazily pointed it at him, with a grin. “I’m Katie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SHE'S HERE!! I've been very excited for her intro forever now so she's here yaayyyy
> 
> so yeah this is gonna be back on a regular posting schedule again, canon is over and now i don't have to dread anymore coming seasons so it's cool~


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evidently unbothered by anything going on to the left of her between Keith and Shiro, Katie stretched out further across the couch, draping her legs over Keith’s lap as Lance told himself not to notice. “So, where have you been all day?” she drawled out, blunt and intrusive.  
> “Pidge,” Shiro admonished, eyes tired and forcing Lance to wonder what the hell a pidge was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay but here she is! Our green girl who prefers to go by Katie :)

“What did you have to call Allura about?” Keith repeated himself. Shiro was very obviously pretending to be too distracted to answer, eyes locked on Lance like he was waiting for some kind of sign.

Evidently unbothered by anything going on to the left of her between Keith and Shiro, Katie stretched out further across the couch, draping her legs over Keith’s lap as Lance told himself not to notice. “So, where have you been all day?” she drawled out, blunt and intrusive.

“Pidge,” Shiro admonished, eyes tired and forcing Lance to wonder what the hell a _pidge_ was.

Lance shot her a look, hesitantly making his way to the armchair beside the couch she’d sprawled herself all over. “What, were you waiting to meet me?” Lance asked, trying for a joke.

“Yeah, a little,” she answered honestly, eyes dropping back down to the hunk of metal in her lap, like it was the most normal thing in the world to say to a damn near perfect stranger. But, Lance realized that if anything, this meant Keith had been talking about him, which.

Well, which could have been really brutal, actually. He started to hope it had been Shiro doing the talking. Keith glanced up then, as if he could feel Lance’s eyes on him and tossed Lance a dry look that was somehow so goddamn sexy Lance felt it in his veins before he looked back down at his book.

“Keith said you were someone from high school,” Katie continued, setting amused eyes onto Lance, screwdriver still twisting into her machine. “I was half expecting you to be Lotor since he wouldn’t tell me who.”

It made Lance remember again with growing bitterness the way Keith had insisted he didn’t know him when he’d answered the door four days ago.  “Oh. Yeah. Well… Lotor is a fate worse than death. I’m just kinda loud sometimes,” he said, smiling a bit in relief when Katie laughed. “You were a freshman when I was a senior, I think. Right?”

“Yeah,” Katie nodded, expression slightly surprised. “You knew me?”

He may never have spoken to her, but he knew her. She was there the night the spirit realm yanked him in on the Witches’ Hill ten years ago. She was there by Keith’s side nearly any time Lance had seen him outside of school. When Keith disappeared before junior year, she became the only thing there left of him. “Yeah, I saw you around. Good with faces.”

“ _Wow_ ,” she whistled, eyes back down on her project. “Prom King 2013 knows who I am. I’m flattered. Not like I was ever really popular,” she shrugged, eyes back down on her project.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Lance tried, because, well, looking at her, she was really pretty. Long brown hair, big brown eyes, cute body, nice smile. She had a cute laugh and was nice at least intention-wise.

“Hate to burst your bubble,” she sighed, smile going wide as she laid it on thick, “but alas, it’s true. Had a lot going on back then, you know?” At that, Keith tuned back in to their conversation, eyes going to Katie, though she didn’t seem to notice. “Couldn’t really afford to waste time with the kids in my class.”

Lance didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know what was impolite to comment.

“And now that I don’t have to deal with high school anymore, I have all this free time to work on stuff like this,” she said, gesturing to the project in her lap. “What are you up to these days?”

“You know, college,” Lance shrugged. “I graduate next year. Then it’s off to grad school.”

“In what?”

“Astronomy,” he answered, voice perhaps a tad too hard, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“ _Astronomy_ ,” she crowed, sitting up straight, swinging her legs right off Keith’s lap who also looked surprised enough to, for some reason, inflate Lance’s ego. “ _Wow_. My brother was interested in that, too. You’re _smart_?!”

“I mean, you could at least pretend not to be surprised.”

“No, I didn’t mean it _that way_ – I just, listen that’s – that’s really, really smart, Lance. I don’t know, I always saw you… I don’t know, becoming an Insta model or something like that.”

“That… makes up for it,” Lance mused, feelings slowly un-bruising. “I guess,” he added for the hell of it. He looked to Keith to see him looking right at him, not even trying to hide that he was just caught staring – seemingly that shocked over learning Lance had a brain somewhere inside his skull and–

Okay, his feelings were somewhat back to hurt. “Gonna pick your jaw up off the floor, Mullet?”

Jarred at Lance’s voice, Keith snapped his eyes back down, though nowhere near the book sitting innocently open in his hands.

“I mean,” Katie started, noticing the tension in Keith, “that’s one of the fields I’ve been considering for when I go to college. Someday,” she scoffed, eyes dropping down onto the project in her lap. “But I don’t really know what I want to do yet outside of this.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Shiro shrugged, shooting her an encouraging smile, a tone to his voice that let on that they most likely had this conversation a lot.

“Well, did your brother ever try it out?” Lance asked. “Or is he doing something else? I mean, I wouldn’t blame him – sometimes I wish I’d done something else.” He was in it for real now, but in the beginning when it started to get serious – all the work and late, late nights and all the reading paired with his dyslexia? If there had been any way feasibly possible for him to do what he really wanted, he would have dropped out of school the next _day_.

“Well, no,” she started. She set her screwdriver down against her leg, fingers nervously twisting it around against the cushion. “A few years ago, my brother actually went missing.”

 _Went missing_. Lance heard it in an echo twice as loud as his own thoughts. He noticed Keith’s eyes freeze in scanning the pages of his book, pages gripped tight in his hand, mouth zipped shut like it was clenched. He _remembered_ the picture on the fridge of two people who weren’t twins but certainly could have been. Two people who looked like Katie. He remembered Shiro speaking of the other in the photo in the past tense, and assuming there’d simply been a falling out behind it.

“Oh,” Lance managed, quietly. “Sorry for bringing that up.”

“It’s fine, I don’t mind talking about it. I guess talking about it makes me feel… I don’t know, like… like it really did happen. If that makes any fuckin’ sense at all,” she shook her head. “So, I talk about my dad and my brother all the time. So, I always know what I’m doing all this for.”

“Sure,” Lance nodded helplessly. “So… what happened?”

She looked up. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but buckle down, it’s a wild one.”

“ _Pidge_ ,” Keith interjected, scandalized as he nudged her.

“It’s okay,” she promised, giving him a shrug. She turned back to Lance as Keith sat, speechless. “Matt and my dad were investigating the paranormal field in this town. They always did their research up here, back in the woods behind this house, ’cause the energy is the strongest here. They were doing that for a few years when I was still a kid. And you know, the spirits here are angry and everything, but my dad and my brother were always here in their space, invading and making it worse and Matt was always kind of a dick about it. Then one day, they just never came home. There was nothing to find – the police ruled them missing and that was it. It’s a cold case. It’s taken us a few years to get through all my dad’s research, but it seems fairly certain to me that they were somehow sucked into their realm.”

“Into _their_ realm – the… the _ghost_ realm?!” Lance squawked. “How did that happen? That can’t happen!”

“I don’t know,” Katie admitted, sardonic smile twisting her lips. “I’m a pretty fantastic decoder, I know what the notes were leading to – that’s what they were doing out there. Trying to find out if it was possible. If the ghosts can be here, why can’t we be there? Either way I have to believe that’s where they are, because if they aren’t there, then…”

“ _Pidge_ ,” Keith said, Shiro uttering it just slightly behind him but Katie shook her head, flashing them a smile, too wide, too easy.

“I’m okay,” she told them. She turned back to Lance, eyes a bit sadder than they were before. “So, we’ve been working on finding them for the past couple of years. I know that sounds crazy–”

“No,” Lance assured her, voice much too gentle for everything he was feeling. “I know a thing or two about ‘crazy.’”

Lance wouldn’t know what to do if he’d lost his family – if they had one day just gone missing. It had been terrible enough to live with thinking he would never meet some of them on _Dia de los Muertos_. He still had nightmares that he woke up back unable to see them, then he’d gone through today, feeling like he’d lost a family he’d never even known – and that had only been _today_. Katie had been missing her family for years.

Katie smiled at him, and involuntarily, he smiled back.

“Of course, I couldn’t have gotten through any of this without Shiro and Keith,” she continued, shooting Keith a trying smile that he seemed otherwise unequipped to deal with, still tight-lipped, still seeming out of his element.

“And Allura,” Keith murmured, eyes dropping back down onto the book Lance knew he wasn’t reading.

“Well, yeah. Obviously, but,” Katie sighed, like she’d said this a thousand times before and she’d say it a thousand times more. “Keith and Shiro are my best fucking friends in the world,” she told Lance, expression going a bit fond as she smirked at him. “All that to say, if you hurt them in any way, you could go missing, too.”

“ _Oh, my god_.”

“Pidge, stop being terrifying,” Shiro admonished, looking more and more tired by the second. “She’s always been like this,” he said to Lance. “If it weren’t for Keith, I’d say she was the evilest baby to surface the earth’s crust.”

“Hey!” Pidge protested.

“ _I’m not evil_ ,” Keith hissed at the same time.

“That’s why they’re so cute,” he glared at them. “They lure you in like an angler fish and then they torment you and turn your hair grey and make you tired.” To which they responded with insincere grins so wide Lance could see all Katie’s teeth and her gums and Keith shrugged, lips quirking up in a lopsided grin, revealing–

 _Dimples_.

 _Jesus_.

Lance choked. He forced a cough. “How long have you known each other?”

“Our families have always been friends,” Shiro answered. “Even since before Pidge was born. Or even Keith, actually. Used to just be me and Matt.”

“Then Keith was born, and he was like. Good enough,” Katie started with a smile far too genuine for what the hell she just said. “So, my parents had me and I was perfect and none of our parents needed anyone else.”

Shiro sighed with a deadpan look at Lance. “Her parents had her and she was such a demon that they didn’t want to run the risk of conceiving a third even worse kid since the combination of smart and evil apparently go hand and hand in their gene pool.”

“Shut the fuck _up_ ,” Katie rolled her eyes, but Lance could see her trying not to smile about it. “Me and Keith ought to leave you all alone here.”

Shiro scoffed. “Keith couldn’t last two days without me. He’d _never_ –”

 “Oh, yeah, I absolutely would,” Keith said simply, face blank aside from a light twitch in his bottom lip as he tried not to smile. He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth because he was trying to kill Lance. “In a contest between you and Pidge, I would _literally_ leave you hanging over the edge of something while Pidge and I got food.”

Pidge cackled like a witch and Lance snorted, unable to help comparing their dynamic to his with his own siblings, noting that they were just like this together. He was happy to be able to make that comparison now. There was a time when they were too afraid to be like _anything_ with him but fragile, bunny soft, unintentionally hurtful.

Katie cleared her throat, placing her tools softly onto the coffee table. “And _finished_ ,” she murmured, dropping her screwdriver onto the floor. “I’ve been working on this thing for weeks,” she told Lance by way of explanation. “Matt invented this thing years ago, but the old one broke. This one’s 2.0.”

“Cool,” Lance enthused for her, though still very, very lost. “So, what the hell is it?”

“Oh, it’s a – well it doesn’t really have a name, but it’s like a detector?” She explained. She turned it right-way-up in her hands so that Lance could see it looked a bit like a price scanner. “I made this out of a price gun.”

Lance was stuck, staring dumb at Katie’s invention, remembering himself at her age when he’d somehow managed to shrink all his laundry so drastically that he’d had to buy new clothes.

“What it does is,” she paused to aim it at him and grin like a fucking deviant and Lance tried to pass it off like he didn’t just flinch. “It can tell me where there’s the most spiritual energy. Matt wanted to know if there were any ghosts in our house that didn’t show themselves, so he made this in his free time, so it’d tell him where they were. If I wanna be in the thick of it, it’s gonna lead me out into the woods back there. The old one always did but,” she hummed, looking between her device and Lance for a bit before turning her device to examine it more closely. “ _Whoa_ ,” she murmured in a low whisper.

“What’s wrong?” Keith asked, a note or urgency in his voice like earlier.

“There’s this really heavy _spot_ on him,” she explained, looking confused. She smacked it a bit against her hand and aimed it at Keith, shook her head when his results read assumingly, normal. “It’s never looked like that on here. It’s never _dark_ – it’s like there’s a black hole in your chest,” she said with narrowed eyes. She smacked it again, aimed it back between Keith and Lance, then just stared at the screen on her device.

Keith made a sound a bit like gasping, closer to a huff. He turned hard-set eyes onto Shiro. “Does this have anything to do with what you called Allura about?” he asked, glare hardening when no one spoke. “Shiro, answer me,” he said, a bit softer, brows furrowing above dark eyes. “Allura trusts me enough for this, so you should, too. I can _help_.”

At that, Shiro shot a conflicted wince to Lance’s wide eyes – too unclear a signal to stop Shiro opening his mouth. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Keith, it’s just not up to me. And Allura is better with this kind of thing.”

“With _what_ kind of thing?” Keith pressed.

“ _Nothing!”_ Lance managed, drawing Keith’s scrutinizing eyes right to him. He’d never seen Keith look like that before. He barely knew how to handle it. “It’s just a – dumb… it’s not even as bad as it seems,” he lied, forcing a light smile so it would stop, so the conversation would end, so Keith would… take his eyes off him. “I can handle – it’s stupid–”

“Alright, I hear you,” Keith said sharply, eyes down, lips a hard line. “Fine.”

Lance didn’t know what he’d just done, but he could tell it was something. He reached into his pockets to grip onto the stones Shay had given him for something to hold onto while Keith looked put out and Shiro looked at a loss.

“Well,” Katie whistled, glancing down at her watch, then over to Lance. “Good luck with that, you brave, blind bastard.” Her smile went a bit impish then, as she pushed herself off the couch. Lance watched as she packed all her belongings into a large messenger bag and slipped it over her shoulder. Standing, Lance could verify that she was actually quite small. She stretched her arms high above her head and let out a quiet yawn. “It’s getting pretty late, guys. I should head out or Mom’ll have a cow,” she rolled her eyes down at Keith. “Again.”

“Oh,” Lance started, feeling the most alone he’d felt all day suddenly. Like he’d just done some damage it’d take a small miracle to repair. Keith wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It was nice officially meeting you, Katie,” he offered.

“Yeah, nice meeting you too,” she said, sounding genuinely pleased. “And don’t worry about… whatever this is,” she said, gesturing in a wide circle to his chest. “Allura’s a magical genius, and she can sort you out in no time at all, but Keith’s her assistant for a reason–”

“ _Assistant_?” Lance croaked out, because he hadn’t _known_ that – still didn’t even know anything about this Allura other than that she apparently had great _references_. Assistant to a _witch?_ Since when was Keith–? Had he _always_ been–?

“–Maybe next time just ask _him_ ,” Katie continued with a wink, voice a bit hard as her eyes rolled over to Shiro.

“Right,” Lance uttered, eyes cutting over to Keith who was looking at Pidge like she’d just betrayed him.

“Thanks, Pidge,” Shiro said, sounding tired. “Loud and clear, there.”

“Good,” she told him, slipping on her shoes. “He’s pretty smart, himself,” she assured him with a confident grin. She backed toward the door and she smiled at Lance like they’d known each other personally much longer than this, like this was what she did for her closest friends and now he was one of them.

“Want me to walk you home?” Keith asked from the couch he was nearly slouched completely off of.

Katie stepped out the door. “I rode my bike, that’s ridiculous,” she said as she pulled it shut behind her.

“Be careful,” Keith told the door dryly.

“Text when you get home,” Shiro said just as dryly, and the moment he did, Keith was on his feet.

“Keith,” Lance started, but wasn’t sure how to finish. He wanted to apologize, but he didn’t fully understand what he’d done. An all too familiar trend concerning problems between the two of them. “I didn’t–”

“You didn’t do anything,” Keith interrupted. “Goodnight.” Without a passing glance at either of them, he left.

A minute passed where he could see it in Shiro eyes, burning like an itch, the need to _ask_ – the cogs turning in his head of how to phrase it, the inevitable desire to know what had happened between himself and Keith that made them like this now.

Lance said goodnight and left, too.

*

  * _Blue Tourmaline, Quartz, Selenite, Celestite (don’t need all together, these are just her recommendations)_
  * _She says to try sleeping with them in your hands_
  * _Should put you more in tune with whoever is doing this and give you more control of your dream_
  * _You’re not in this alone, if you need someone, come find me_



Lance flipped the notecard between his fingers twice more before putting it back down on his bedside table, Shiro’s slanted, teacher-like script burned behind his eyelids he’d read it so much in the last few hours.

The stones Shay had given him sat beside the note, equally as useless together as long as Lance was so scared.

This was _real_. Katie had seen it on a _machine_ , it was so real, and his chest felt deeper and deeper from that moment on until he felt like he was sinking into the floor with the weight of it.

And it just made him want to lie down – made him remember how tired he was, but he didn’t sleep. Couldn’t or wouldn’t was the debate he’d been having with himself as he twirled the cardstock in his fingers, deciding not to even think about cowardice. He didn’t want to experience the things he felt from the dream he’d had ever again. He wasn’t ready to face it again just yet.

His eyelids continued to droop, however, and he finally fell under, jerking himself awake only when his body started to slump forward. He shook his head, slapping his sweaty hands to his cheeks frantically before belatedly deciding his bed was a bad place to try to stay awake.

Peeling out his contacts, he reached for his glasses and took to the hallway. There at the end were Shiro and Keith’s bedroom doors, Shiro’s wide open while Keith’s was shut. One glance down into the living room told him Keith was shutting himself away in there. The couch downstairs seemed to be more Keith’s than his own room.

In the kitchen, to his surprise, he found Shiro sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a steaming cup of coffee between his hands and he sighed at the sound of the kitchen door, speaking without looking.

“So, you gonna–” he paused, looking very surprised when he glanced over to see Lance standing in the doorway. He flashed a sheepish smile. Lance couldn’t stop noticing the coffee maker to the right of him. “Sorry,” Shiro said, “thought you were Keith.”

“Oh,” Lance said, feeling out of place and stranded. He stepped over to the counter to busy himself, grabbing a mug from the cupboard.

“Wanna sit?” Shiro offered.

“Okay,” Lance murmured, filling his mug with coffee. He could feel Shiro’s eyes on his back all the while and stayed turned around for that reason – was trying to put off the inevitable for as long as he could.

“So,” Shiro started before Lance was ready – _let me have_ one _sip of coffee for this_ – “did it work?”

“Huh?” Lance started, turning over his shoulder to see Shiro waiting patiently for his answer – the one he didn’t really have. “Yeah, the stones… right. Thanks again, by the way. That was really nice of you. I didn’t try it yet, though,” he admitted, pouring his mug when the coffee was ready. “I don’t think I can handle all that again so soon.”

“That’s fine,” Shiro said, taking another sip from his mug as if to stall. “Just, you know. You don’t have to do it alone. Keith and I are both pretty experienced with this stuff. We can help until Allura comes back.”

“Speaking of Allura, I’ve been meaning to ask about her,” Lance puzzled, taking the chair Shiro had offered, eyes locking on the refrigerator behind him where the picture of Shiro and, he assumed, Allura, hung by a red refrigerator magnet. “I’ve heard a million things about her. When am I gonna get to meet her?”

“She’s in England, visiting family,” Shiro answered. “She left Keith in charge while she was gone,” he said with a sigh and guilt in his eyes, brows furrowing further and further the harder he glared at the table.

He wondered for barely a minute _what_ , exactly she’d left Keith in charge of that Shiro couldn’t do on his own, before his three-a.m. hazy brain supplied: probably the very thing Keith had been upset at Shiro for not letting him be involved with earlier. “Is that why he got so upset?” Lance asked.

“Yeah,” Shiro sighed out, finally meeting Lance’s eyes. He adopted an expression of pure exhaustion as he took another sip from his mug. “I know what he can do. I know what he’s capable of from pure will alone – he’s not even _like_ Allura, he’s just so _determined_. It’s just that I get worried. He puts too much of himself into this – into everything that isn’t slowing the hell down or taking a breather or letting me _rest_.” He paused abruptly, sighing down into his mug. “Sorry, Lance. You didn’t ask for all that.”

“It’s okay,” Lance offered up quickly, knowing his wasn’t hiding his curiosity well. “You can vent. You seem really stressed about it. Whatever it is.”

That seemed to be all the permission Shiro needed. “He’s upset because he thinks I don’t trust him. This… comes up a lot. It’s really my problem, I’m the one always worried about what could happen to him. But he forgets that things _have_ happened to him and I don’t want to see that again so I’m just trying to keep him safe, but I always wind up doing it like an overprotective _dad_.” He let out a scoff. “Like our dad used to. ‘Cause I’m kind of becoming our father,” he groaned out with a tired laugh. It made Lance laugh a bit, too. “I knew that,” he admitted. “But every time I think I’m getting it under control…”

Lance felt the ache of a smile stretched too long before he realized he was even smiling at all. He knew Hunk and Shay, and he had the most in-love parents on the planet, so he’d heard a lot of sweet things in his lifetime, but. This was something else. “It’s really sweet how much you care about him. I’m sure he knows… you know, that this all comes from a good place.”

“Thanks,” Shiro smiled. “But I do need to back off a bit. He’s not nine anymore.”

“This is the sweetness gift that just keeps on giving,” Lance smiled.

“That’s some commentary from the guy who started all this.”

“ _Me_?” Lance squawked. “What did _I_ do?”

Laughing softly, Shiro rolled his eyes. “Directly? Nothing. It’s just that whatever this thing is between you and Keith… I don’t know, I kept my mouth shut about your ghost situation because I didn’t want to get Keith all riled up about it, sure, but it also seemed like something you told me in confidence specifically _not_ to tell Keith.”

Lance floundered. “What gave you that idea?”

“You asked me where Keith was before you told me any of it yesterday like you wanted him not to be there,” Shiro drawled out. “And you basically screamed over me earlier tonight to keep Keith from finding out. You know I’m going to ask…”

Of course, Lance knew he was going to ask. He’d been counting down the days since the first _look_ when Keith had made very clear his thoughts on Lance. But Lance had _hoped_ to… he supposed, somehow change Keith’s mind on him before he got sucked into this conversation.

Still, though. Shiro had been way more forthcoming about his own personal issues concerning the very same hot topic uniting them than he’d had to be. And he’d done so much for Lance already just out of the goodness of his heart….

“ _Fine_ ,” Lance surrendered, ducking his face behind his mug. “But it’s really not that big a deal,” he shrugged, “Just that I’ve known Keith since school. Since _pre-k_. Since I first really have _memories_ … and he saw me on his porch and he pretended he didn’t know me,” he said with too much emotion, too much _feeling_ and he–

He groaned, lowered his coffee cup, tired of hiding. He looked Shiro head on.

“And I wanted to be his friend. He scared me – he always seemed to be in some kind of danger. Sometimes, it seemed like he didn’t mind me being around. And other times… pretty much all of the later times, he pretended I wasn’t there. And then he disappeared. I thought… I don’t know, I didn’t know _what_ to think. You should have heard the rumors going around school. I guess I was scared he was hurt or something. I was _so scared_ he was… _really_ hurt, I guess. But we weren’t… friends. So, I had to get over it and quit thinking about it all the time, I was driving Hunk crazy,” he chuckled, humorless and ugly. Unlike him. He felt his fingers wringing together under the table in his lap. “So last week, I answer this ad for a roommate and it’s him. And he asks me who I am. For a minute, I was so happy to see him okay, it didn’t hurt. And then it _really_ hurt, and he slammed the door in my face. You said I could live here,” he said quickly, done dwelling on _that_ , he’d _promised_ himself– “I don’t want... This is _my_ problem – all this ghost, dream stuff. I don’t want to – He’ll just think – if I–”

“So, you’re _worried_?” Shiro murmured. He probably hadn’t blinked once since Lance started talking, face going on a journey of expressions Lance couldn’t even track in his desperation to make _sense_ , for Shiro to understand.

Lance felt like he couldn’t speak anymore, throat closing up, trying to discourage any other deep, burning confessions in his chest from rocketing up. He tried to push them down and bury them deep, preferably beneath, even, the foreign pit taking up residence there.

“Keith never told me any of that,” Shiro admitted finally, voice so low Lance had to strain to hear. “I’ve been asking him about this since you moved in, but he won’t talk to me about it. He just says he refuses to go back. There was… a lot going on back then. With me being gone, and our parents dying. And then me coming home right before half of Pidge’s family went missing. This sounds like I’m making excuses for him,” Shiro realized, eyes cast down.

Lance blinked, unsure of what he’d say if he opened his mouth. He hadn’t known all that was going on with him back then. He hadn’t known Keith’s parents had _died_. Not that Keith had ever said… or even stopped to _listen_ …

“Keith has always been a tornado,” Shiro sighed at the table. “A storm comes, and he gets caught up spinning in it and he destroys everything around him just trying to get away. I think you were collateral damage. If he pushes hard enough, eventually people quit trying to make him stop.” He lifted heavy grey eyes up to Lance, mapping out Lance’s face so rapidly, Lance couldn’t imagine what he must have looked like. “But he still shouldn’t have treated you like that. I’m sorry.”

“I mean…” Lance managed, voice thin and weak. “Don’t apologize….” He didn’t know what else to say.

“I’ll talk to him–”

“ _No_!” Lance panicked, clearing his throat once he caught himself. “Don’t – please don’t say anything, I’m okay.”

Shiro froze, hands unnaturally stiff around his mug as he took Lance in.

Lance fought to keep his eyes up and off the table.

“So, sorry to ask you this,” Shiro said finally, “but you and my brother… were you ever–?”

“No,” Lance answered quickly, trying to look candid and unaffected, everything he wasn’t – everything he hadn’t been since he was young and the answer to this question was exactly the same.

Shiro blinked. “I’m just asking because it’s okay if you… felt anything for him. In fact, all this would make a lot more sense. I just wanted you to know it’s not gonna change what I think of you if you did.”

“Fine,” Lance huffed. “Maybe I _did_. But I’m over it,” he said, stretching what was quite possibly his biggest lie, just for the fact that he wished more than anything that it were true. “It’s fine.”

Shiro looked like that was all the answer he needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is! He said it! At least a little lol

**Author's Note:**

> God I hope this was enjoyable to read this fic is ruining my life, it mugged me in an alley last week and never lets me sleep
> 
> please drop me a comment if you fancy ~~~ or come scream at me on [Tumblr!](https://ambitiousskychild.tumblr.com/)


End file.
